Black Magic
by Orrunan
Summary: Second of Magic verse. Harry is the one in need of rescue now. Doctor J has sent Heero to get him and Luna has sent herself. With domestic eugenics and an arranged marriage hanging over his head Harry has little time to brood now. The war is escalating...
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue: ****Ready or not, the history marches on**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

My beta is Mystic 777.

* * *

No tyranny has ever succeeded in creating a political system that lasts. It may last the lifetime of man, even several lifetimes, but eventually the time is up for all tyrannical regimes because eventually people have had it with oppression, eventually such regime is no longer able to exercise sovereignty over people without the recourse to violence and that is the beginning of the end.

For a long time the United Earth Sphere Alliance, and the Romefeller Foundation that backed it up, had practiced the tactics of divide and conquer. Enough of its citizens had been well off enough that no global movement for freedom had been formed. But even the politically savviest will make a misstep eventually and now UESA (and Romefeller Foundation with its less than sensible execution of Mathilda Sisulu and incarceration of her disciples) had driven the Colonies, Brazilia and sizable chunks of South Africa Federation and Russia to revolt at the same time. And Sanq, while not fighting, was providing covert humanitarian aid to the rebels.

In an Umoja camp in an Ugandan jungle a woman named Hallow Nguen was sitting on a computer writing a new entry. She had become a war correspondent, writing a blog of the war as she saw it to be uploaded once the net was safe and usable again. She wondered, as she drank a glass of water and wiped sweat off her forehead with a handkerchief, how she had out of blue become what she would call a respectable journalist. Space babies and crop circles were a thing of past and she happily funded the organization. By her side were Matthew Sisulu and Esther Corel.

"The Black family dominates industrial diamond manufacturing sector," Esther told Hallow, looking over her shoulder. "They have been breaking the Quillan act for over twenty years; it's an UESA law that attempts to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply. In other words, monopoly by merit is legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve his status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. Walburga Black unlawfully monopolized the supply of diamonds and conspired to fix, raise and control diamond prices."

"Doesn't the Black Corporation support Oz financially?" Matthew asked.

"Yes," answered Esther. And Hallow let her fingers dance over the keyboard.

As below, so above. In colonies L2 and L4 two scientists were reading highly curious reports from their champions. The civil war in Uganda had spread over to Kenya and Sudan over the course of few hours and their sources on Earth were already reporting withdrawal of resources meant for fight against the colonies; they were needed more acutely in Africa now.

"Hedgehog!" declared a fat man with a receding hairline and a thin, dark moustache he waxed to stand straight out at each end. He sounded rather offended. His assistant, a red-haired woman with a stern face murmured her agreement for all she had no idea what she was agreeing with.

"Gogol's machines? Hmm?" muttered a man with very long nose and a long scar on his cheek. "Why not?" He truly was that eccentric.

And at the heart of this all were two children who claimed to be magical.

* * *

Harry Potter-Dursley was an unusual boy. He had lived two lives, that of the Boy Who Lived in another dimension and an ordinary middle class boy in this one. He had saved a real Philosopher's Stone from his undead nemesis and fought a basilisk. He had also helped a Gundam pilot to liberate six people from Oz custody on two different continents. He was aware that many people probably dreamed of life so extraordinary, but, he thought, those people hadn't tried _living_ this kind of life. It was frankly tiring.

It was the way he wasn't allowed to catch his breath and rest at all. The winter of the Great Sirius Black Scare and the Great Pettigrew Reveal, followed immediately by dimensional displacement, then the adventure here that he hadn't minded, honestly, because he had been able to help Luna and Sirius and Quatre and it had kept his mind off things. But now, just when he had returned home and anticipated some peace and downtime he had been yanked into the next misadventure, into more uncertainly and peril and Harry felt like biting his tongue off, that was how annoyed he was at everything.

Fine, so far this new peril hadn't been terribly peril-like. Harry stood in a large room furnished with heavy, dark-coloured, old furniture and stared at the clothes laid out on the bed: a white button-down shirt and a reddish-brown tweed vest, complete with navy blue pinstripe trousers. So those clothes were better than his school uniform, by a small margin – tweed vest! – but he had to admit to being confused. This was the first time the people who had grabbed him had insisted playing dress-up with him and he wasn't entirely sure if he was kidnapped or what.

At least he wasn't arrested. That was good.

He sighed and begun to change. Wearing the silly orange-maroon uniform had done a lot to wean him off of embarrassment and when Harry turned to look at himself from the mirror with gilded frames – it couldn't be real gold, surely – that reached from the floor to the ceiling he felt only mild disconnect. It didn't look a lot like him at all, the boy in the mirror. It was like some other boy, someone who went to Eton or a famous school like that, someone who shot animals from horse's back and knew how to dance with real step patterns. He waved his hand and the boy in the mirror obediently waved back. He was concentrated in the mirror he almost didn't hear when there was a knock on the door. It was two shorts raps, clear, but not too loud.

"Come in," Harry said. The door was pushed open and a black man in a suit stepped in. He looked over Harry from head to toe and nodded.

"Dame Black will meet you now," he said.

"Dame Black owes me an explanation," Harry snarled and pushed behind the man, only then realising that the very satisfying stomping on his way wasn't going to happen because he had no clue where to go. And so he followed the man, glaring daggers at his back the whole way.

Who was this Dame Black? She was related to Sirius, somehow, but Harry had never asked anything about his family in either world. He had thought that he didn't have any, in fact. He hadn't ever thought of Sirius as particularly rich, but when he looked at the place it screamed Old Money loud and clear. The mansion, for it was a mansion, was the same Neo-Gothic style Smeltings was, a graceful blend of stone and metal and glittering glass, of towers and Roman windows and stained glass and sharply defined lines with flat roofs, whole walls of glass. Inside it couldn't have been more different, however. Smeltings was a sunny, modern, light place whereas this Black mansion was very dark with heavy wine red and golden curtains that seemed to overshadow the rooms ever when they were pulled to the side, heavy dark wood furniture with curvy legs and heavy-looking, dark wallpapers. Everything was so clean Harry would have eaten off the floor and everything seemed terribly expensive to him, yet the place seemed also somehow shabby, almost like a haunted house. The frowning paintings of men and women in dark clothes glared at him from the walls and Harry wouldn't have wanted to walk under their gaze in the dark.

But while Harry was nervous and annoyed he was nowhere near as scared and angry as he would have been had the soldiers dragged him off into the car on someone else's orders. This woman had raised Sirius so she might be a bit high-handed and snobby and, apparently, gloomy, but she couldn't be all bad, right?

The room the butler led him to was two stories high and it resembled Harry a bit of Hogwarts' Great Hall, though it was of course a lot smaller and the roof had no sky painted on it. A wide marble stairway led to a gallery circling the room and there were two potter palm trees at the bottom of it, but other than those there was only a long table with so pristine white tablecloth it was almost blinding after all the dimness and the chairs around it. At the head of the table sat a woman, Dame Black. The Butler gave him a polite push to the back and exited the room as Harry walked closer, loath to seem hesitant now.

Dame Black was an elderly woman. Her hair was still long and such shining black Harry though she probably dyed it. Other than two deep wrinkles above her nose her pale face kind of flat and smooth the same way the pictures of models in magazines were smooth after two hours of applying make up and one hour of photoshopping and it looked out of place next to her wrinkled neck. She was a small, frail-looking woman, yet intimidating in that smoothness.

A coat of arms hung on the wall above her back. It was a dark and gloomy thing, with three crows, an arm holding a sword and a skull above it all, and under it read a motto Tojours Pur.

"You, young man, are a descendant of the proud Black line through my aunt Dorea Black who married Charlus Potter," she declared in lieu of greeting. Harry's heart jumped at this and the happiness at these news briefly overcame his anxiety. He was actually related to Sirius too? That was great! But the woman wasn't done yet.

"I am Dame Walburga Black, the head of the family and last living person to carry its name."

"But what about Sirius?" Harry asked, frowning. Now he was sure as sure can be that something wasn't right. And Walburga Black's face distorted into ugly, angry grimace.

"Do not mention that blood traitor in my house! My son has disgraced us all!" Then she inhaled deeply and her face settled back into its neutral mask like a window with shutters on the inside had been closed. Harry bristled inside at her words; they reminded him way too much of the wicked Dursleys. "Please sit down and eat. We have a lot to talk about," she continued like nothing had happened at all.

"Yes, we do. Why did you send your men to grab me like that? I only just returned home after being kidnapped, I missed my family and they missed me," he said loud and clear, making Black smile wryly.

"You appear to have inherited the strong Black spirit. That is good," she commended him and Harry realised that hadn't sounded terribly traumatised. He wondered if it was too late to try shedding a few tears and decided it probably was. So he sat down opposite to Walburga Black, happy it was the seat furthest away from her.

Like there had been a signal – maybe Black had pressed some button – servants came in carrying food trays. The setting in front of Harry was complicated, with two plates on top of each other, folded napkin on top of them and a series of forks on the left side of his plates and a series of spoons and knives on his right. The women in black and white clothes served them appetizers, some kind of bread with walnut-cheese topping and green leaves arranged artistically around them. He picked a random knife and fork from the setting, but at least Black wasn't glaring at him for it.

"Thank you," he told the mousy woman. He was the last person in the world, er, two worlds to be impolite to the people doing the real house work.

"It is important that you understand the role the Ancient and Noble Family of Black plays in the great scheme of things and your place in it," Black started with cold, sharp voice. What I should do, Harry wondered. What would Quatre do?

_Quatre would nod and smile and collect information to use later.__ He would find out what kind of threat this is. Too bad he would also know what order to use the utensils in and I have no clue._

"Shoot," he said and felt a twitch of belligerent satisfaction when Dame Black's mouth twisted into disapproving pout.

"All humans are defined before their birth by the genetic makeup of their parents," she begun and cut a piece of her bread entrée with a delicate flick of wrist. "Some receive good genes, some do not. It is not fair, it is not unfair, it simply is a truth of life."

"And if you happen to get bad luck in the lottery, what then?" Harry asked and his knife cut through the piece of bred under it and scraped against the porcelain with a screech.

"For some to be excellent, many must be undistinguished or even unworthy. Material success and wealth is a sign that you have good genes. We are the Elect who must defend society against the ignorant and the radical rabble."

Harry continued to mechanically put the little bread things to his mouth as he stared at the old woman with something akin to horror. Walburga Black preached of the natural order of rights and distribution of riches and it all came down to Blood; he could practically hear the reverently spoken capital letter. If a family was successful generation after generation, she spoke thus with cultured voice and accent, it was surely a sign of good genetics which became apparent as greater intelligence and initiative than average which allowed those family lines to retain their wealth, and she spouted heaps upon heaps of pseudoscientific notions of familial supremacy and purity. Was this woman actually related to Sirius? She had to be, considering her genetic fanaticism, but if there ever was a mother-son pair that made you suspect adoption… or proved that genetics were much overrated.

Harry was a budding scientist and the shadow of ugly, ugly words hung over the long table, Harry and Walburga much further apart than merely meters, and those words were _scientific racism_.

"I have no sons left, my sisters both have only one son each and can not spare them. Sirius named you his heir, as much as it pains me to admit this he had the right to do so and you are our Blood. This is why I have decided to adopt you and raise you to become the family heir."

"I already have mum and dad, I don't need and can't be adopted! And I wouldn't want to be adopted by you if I was living in a cupboard under stairs!" So much for nodding and smiling, but seriously, the woman was too much to bear.

"More is at stake here than your childish tantrum, young man, and you would do well to not mouth off at your elders. A Romefeller family is in need of an heir and the position is one such as you should be grateful for. And you will be my son and heir, whether you want or not," she stated primly and what objections Harry had fled his mind when the words Romefeller family sunk into his mind. Romefeller? The same Romefeller that had Corel arrested? Corel had said he had been Black employee, how could Harry have been stupid enough to forget?

And now he was kidnapped by a fascist who believed in domestic eugenics and was part of a group hell bent on world domination. Harry Potter-Dursley was an unusual boy and sadly this was the kind of day that tended to happen to him.

* * *

A day had gone by, followed by a serene night. The time was right and she was right.

Harry had called her. He'd had a phone good for two more days and Luna's number, and Luna could speak to Duo. What Harry didn't have was a place to go to. He could have escaped anytime he wanted, wished himself away, but where could he have gone that he wouldn't have been found? Harry had a need for help.

Luna Lovegood was Loony Lovegood, the girl no one had wanted to be friends with because she was too strange even in a society that thrived on strange and mystical. She was also Luna Lovegood whose grandmother didn't need to work for the people who had imprisoned her family anymore because they had been saved by Harry. Right now she was also mildly exasperated at Harry as she wrote with a pen on a green post-it note; he really couldn't stay out of trouble even for a day, could he?

It was an astronaut pen, one of those neat pens you could write with on anything at any angle. Her father had bought her one for her birthday a few years back and she had tested ii upside down, against the ceiling of her room when standing on a chair (success), underwater in the bathtub (success) and on butter (success, though her mother had been mad). Luna wondered what had happened to her pen. She would have liked taking this one, but it would have been mean and she didn't like being mean. People had been mean enough to her after all.

She was still onboard Anna the Atrocious Appaloosa, but it was nearing the port of Marsa Matrouh where a contact of Duo's was supposed to take her to the local Sweeper base, from where she would be relocated to L4 at the first chance. But Luna's work wasn't done yet and so she wrote an explanation.

_I am sorry, but Harry is in trouble and needs me. Tell mum and dad and grandmum to not worry too much, I will come home after I have saved Harry. Lots of love and oceans of kisses, Luna L._ She had wanted to sign it with her magical girl name, but no secret identity would remain secret for long if revealed so whimsically.

She had been given a back bag, a huge, army green thing one of the Sweepers had donated, and she had packed cup noodles, hard bread and canned fruits, without forgetting the can opener. She would have liked to take some mincemeat for Edgar, but it wouldn't age well in the heat so he would have to do with bread for a little while. Her meager change of clothes, tooth brush, comb and a bar of soap went in next and then she lifted the bag to her back, brushing her hair from obfuscating her vision. The sun was setting fast under the horizon as a fiery red sunfall, painting the sea and the sky as bloody-fiery-rosy as yesterday morning had been, and the whole world was at her feet. The ship was about to dock and Luna climbed to the railing, spreading her arms.

It was a state of mind, like all she did. She could not force, could not bulldoze through things like distance and gravity and a gram of fine bone china in her hand, not like Harry could, but when the moment was right and she was right she could make wonders happen. She filled her lungs with air that smelled like sea and smoke and hot sand and freedom. Like a nightingale, like an oriole, like a child sprinkled with pixie dust (not real pixie, no, but the pixie dust from the book) Luna flew away, just like she had promised Harry she could for him, she would for him.

Luna Lovegood was an unusual girl. For one she was magical girl Final Nargle Invoker Luna and with Edgar the Magical Hedgehog she was on her first mission; to rescue Harry Potter-Dursley!

* * *

AN: And so begins Black Magic. You can choose your friends, but Blood you are stuck with as Harry is about to discover.

If someone would be willing to beta my work I would be very grateful; my English is quite fluent, but I am NOT a native speaker.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter I: The wicked witch of the west**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit

* * *

Heero Yuy, pilot 01, was investigating rumors that a local cosmetics company was in truth a cover for Alliance biological weapons research. The complex had been conveniently situated at the very edge of the city, which spying on it easier… and made it look suspicious in his eyes. In his experience, if business that badly wanted to avoid attracting attention there was usually a good reason for it. He arrived at six in the morning and begun his surveillance.

He had a book of Japanese birds with him in a backpack and the memory stick of his card had a selection of pictures of local birds. He had dressed casually in dark blue track pants, gray sweater and a cap and his gun rested under the sweater at the small of his back. He doubted this disguise would help him much if it was indeed an Alliance facility he was observing and he was caught. If it was a civilian facility, however, this would convince the security guards to let him go. His camera had zooming ratio of 50x, covering ranges from wide angle to super telephoto and all featured some form of optical or mechanical image stabilization; with this he could have counted the individual leaves on the potted plant on one windowsill of an office on the third floor. Getting close wasn't necessary at this stage.

So he laid down in the thick shrubbery and watched the building through his binoculars, timing guard changes and noting when lights went on and off in different windows. He slowly worked his way around the complex over the course of five hours in a wide circle. There were three entrances to the complex and a guard station at each, but the grounds didn't seem to be patrolled. Though there was bound to be interior patrols after they closed at five for regular business. The main building was five stories and the two smaller buildings reached two stories. The top floor of the main building was the one that interested him because it had been either already or still occupied at six o'clock in the morning when he had arrived to the hill. Heero suspected that the top floor might be residential, though more intel was needed to verify that; Venetian blinds blocked every window.

The floor plans he had didn't tell much about what he would find in the upper levels. Based on the wide-open spaces on the blueprint, the laboratory area was below ground. The water system interested him as well; the complex had its own water supply, but no water treatment system so it had to be connected into the city sewer system somewhere.

This was only preliminary investigation for a potential mission. He couldn't do much more for now because he couldn't risk an injury or worse before the planned attack to a Taurus transport route, but he had never taken well to being idle. Preliminary investigations complete, he crept from the undergrowth and turned his back on the complex.

The hike back to his hideout was just over thirteen kilometers, but Heero didn't mind the exercise; he was finally reaching his optimal levels at 1 G. The colony average was 0.5200 G and the closest to Earth's gravity his training facilities on L1 had managed had been 0.7895. Despite the use of weights to further simulate planetary conditions, this left him performing beneath his usual standards when he landed. The weather had on more than one occasion proved a hindrance as well – yet another thing the colonies couldn't simulate appropriately – was near optimal now, clear yet not too hot and windless.

There was a large abandoned, but highly lucrative tea plantation in the Tagata district of Shizuoka province. The Catholic Church had established and successfully managed the over five hundred hectare tea plantation with a factory of its own, but when the business had been sold to a private business owner it had been run down due to bad management. Now shrubbery had invaded the once well-kept tea fields and the tea plants had in turn migrated down from the green hills to the courtyards of the buildings.

Heero had established a temporary base in the abandoned plantations. The old tea factory had come to hide and shelter Wing; the building wasn't high enough for the Gundam to stand straight in and so the area wasn't considered high-risk despite it's other advantages. However, unlike the mass-produced Oz Aries and Leon suits, Wing could bend from it's alighting gear joints and the midsection fold to fit in a space almost half of it's height. The large tea fields that surrounded the buildings offered privacy, clean water was easily available from the well after he had thoroughly cleaned the old pump and he had joined his own generator into the plantation grid, making the place habitable enough.

Heero much preferred this manner of hiding to taking cover under the guise of a student in a boarding school. There, he needed to blend in socially and he was painfully aware of his shortcomings in that area. The original plan for Operation Meteor had been to drop the L3 colony X-18999 on Earth, after which the Gundams would take control of the planet easily, and this was the goal Heero's training had been aimed to prepare him for. In this plan the Gundams were to be tools for a massacre, no more and no less. Blending in hadn't been an issue.

He was… more comfortable with the new plan. But now his training was less than adequate in some respects.

Heero stepped from the bright midday sun into the shadowed interior of the factory. The facility had been low-tech, one of those places where luxury tea was manufactured and packaged by hand, and he'd only had to move a few large chutes and tables from the largest hall into the room once used for oxidation. When he had first appropriated the place it still smelled of tea leaves, but now the smell of oil and coolant had replaced the old scents. He marched to Wing and climbed in, opening the channel and waiting for his new instructions. He didn't expect to get any; this was merely the standard contact time. His next mission was already planned: on the ninth of June, five days from now, he and the other pilots were to attack a strategically important Taurus transport route.

Again, a failure in planning: they had not been trained to work together. Heero considered the possibility of arranging training in some distant location. It would be difficult to co-ordinate their schedules in the middle of five-men war, but they needed that training for future common assaults.

He waited, comfortable in the cramped cockpit; the sensation of being enveloped by his most efficient weapon never failed to soothe him. Seconds ticked by, and exactly at the appointed time the vidphone's screen flickered to life and Doctor J peered up at him from it.

"It's nice to hear from you, Heero, I see you are well. That is good, I have new orders for you," the man said, as though Heero had been the one to call him, light glinted from his lenses. Heero nodded.

He wasn't fond of Doctor J. For all his grandfatherly manner, the man was a ruthless taskmaster and Heero knew well the man demanded dedication unto death. It wasn't something to be liked, but it was something to be respected. He would do anything and everything the man ever ordered him, at any cost to himself.

"Harry Dursley is a citizen of the Euro-Russian Federation, Great Britain." Doctor J disappeared from the screen, replaced by a young boy in what had to be a photo from a school registry. "He is currently being held by Walburga Black, the head of the Black family branch of the Romefeller Foundation. You are to retrieve him from her mansion in London and bring him to safety. Dursley is capable of escaping on his own, but he has nowhere to escape to. I want him taken to a Sweeper base and then brought to L1."

"Mission accepted," answered Heero. A private mansion might have good security, but it would be easy to escape from compared to Oz holding facilities. Unlike Oz holding facilities, however, the location posed a risk to civilian lives. "How am I to contact him?" He wasn't interested in who Harry Dursley was or why he needed rescuing. He only needed to know where, when and if J had preferences on how.

"I will send you the full mission briefing. The sooner you get to him the better. To our best knowledge Dame Black isn't aware of young Dursley's importance and the shorter time he is in her hands the smaller possibility she will find out," Doctor J said and his hand moved outside of the vidphone's line of sight. After a while Wing's computer sounded a discreet chime.

"Pilot 01 out," Heero said and closed the connection. The he opened his mail account.

The need for secure communication was crucial in any operation and had Heero been prone to pity his enemies he might have spared a fleeting thought for the Alliance troops in southern Africa as he read his instructions. No such thing existed as an invincible program. Terms "secure" and "unreachable" were always relative. One day a connection was secure and the next some government hacker or rebel computer genius team proved otherwise, making it only formerly invincible. But the six block ciphers symmetric key encryption they used was currently the state of art, making his connection to Doctor J as secure as possible. Also, any computer would have flat-out refused to give an IP address to the server the message was sent from.

**From:**Doctor J (doctorjcmd.******.com)  
**To:**01 (01comb.******.com)  
**Subject:**Mission briefing  
[Attachment: missiondetails017]

Codename Heero Yuy, his real name unknown even to himself, wasn't interested in who and why; those particulars were provided to him anyway. He also wasn't in the habit of questioning his orders, but the contents of the compressed file _missiondetails017_ made him question his commanding officer's sanity.

Maxwell had previously claimed that Heero only had three expressions. While that was an exaggeration he was unusually inexpressive, which the Deathscythe pilot had seemed to take as a personal offense of some kind. He had attempted to tease and coax and wrangle any look other than "serious" or "determined" or "angry" from Heero when they had both resided onboard Howard's salvage ship. He would have delighted had he seen the stoical pilot now.

"I am supposed to rescue a magician?" Heero wasn't in the habit of talking to himself either, but despite 02's claims, he wasn't a machine either.

* * *

Not counting the Umoja camp, the study room was the most masculine room Harry had ever seen. It emanated a different kind of masculinity from the guerrilla stronghold though, refined and gentlemanly. A bookcase full of thick, boring-looking books Harry was sure were there only for the sake of appearances – surely no one actually read those – and dark, wood-paneled walls and textured floors. His steps had disappeared into the rugged carpet in the shades of brown and red and sadly so had his kidnappers when she had managed to sneak up on him kicking the table leg, staring out of the window. The red upholstery and muted golden curtains all added to the masculine quality. The honest-to-Merlin stuffed head of a deer on top of a mantel piece, however, took the cake, the marzipan rose on top and a whole jar of cocktail cherries. Its creepy glass eyes seemed to follow Harry wherever in the room he tried to sit or stand. This was Harry's new study and he hated it almost as much as the infamous cupboard under the stairs.

He was disgusted by the gaudy nature of the room, but at least it provided him with a nice, sturdy desk that as a barricade between himself and the stern-faced woman glaring at him. Walburga Black's ice green eyes seemed to drill into his skull, making him fidget on his chair. Her face was like an artist's sunset, heavily painted and most likely also cut with a skillful scalpel to make her appear some twenty years younger than she actually was. Harry flipped the pages of the book she had given him, pausing at random to read a sentence or two.

_If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. _

_War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the other's advantage._

_Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved._

"Oh, you can't actually be serious…" Harry muttered and allowed the book fall from his hand. He wondered briefly if this was his kidnapper/hostess' idea of a drawn-out practical joke or if she really thought this would work. Wasn't propaganda supposed to be subtle or something?

"I am always serious," Walburga Black assured with voice dryer than Sahara at mid-summer. "Which kind of insight you gain from reading this book?"

"You tell me, you're the one forcing me to read it!" Harry snarled and valiantly resisted the urge to throw said book at her. It was a paper volume of _The Prince_ by Machiavelli and it was nice and heavy in a way the ebook-readers couldn't match.

Harry ran an Internet search when Black first gave him the book. He had found out that many authors had historically argued that it was in fact a political satire. Many agreed that while it appeared to be written for a prospective monarch, it could be read as deliberately emphasizing the benefits of free republics over monarchies. Black hadn't been very pleased when he had pointed this out.

"Read chapters one and two for tomorrow and prepare to discuss the subject matter of new princedoms with me," she instructed. "You will become the next head of the family after all. An uneducated Black would be a right tragedy."

"Haven't I said 'no' enough?" Harry slumped against the back of the chair, annoyed beyond measure. "Is that why you decided propaganda was the way to go?"

"This is classical education, it is important you pay attention. It wouldn't do to be expelled for being lazy when you have such an important legacy to live up to," Black threatened. Harry snorted.

"One, this isn't part of Smeltings' curriculum. Two, I thought you decided Smeltings was too low-class for me? Three,since when do you have the power to expel me from there?" Smeltings was one of the classiest schools in Great Britain, but apparently nothing but THE most prestigious would do for Dame Black and her precious legacy.

"Your brother, if I'm not mistaken, still attends this school of yours?" Her voice was so innocent now, like she was talking of weather or a new hat. The room was too heavily decorated with thick fabrics for it to echo, but those words ricocheted inside his skull. Your brother… this school of yours…

Harry wasn't in the habit of attacking people; he was always the one attacked first. There had been the one notable exception of jumping Sirius when he had thought the man had sold his parents out and seriously, who wouldn't have gotten violent in a situation like that? The idea of hitting women or the elderly usually horrified him even more, but now his fists were clenching and unclenching and it was _tempting_. He glared at the horrible woman, but he was defeated for now and she knew it. Silence rested over them thick and oppressing.

And then her face softened a bit. In a way she almost looked kind.

"If your homework is of appropriate quality I will let you contact your previous family – under supervision, naturally," she said and with these parting words she left the study, the hem of her black and green dress fluttering against the floor. She doesn't seem to realize I can contact them by email even without a phone, Harry thought. But his stomach was churning as he watched her retreating back. She really, really thought she was being generous.

Harry stood up so forcibly the chair behind him scraped against the floor and tilted back hazardously. He threw the book to the floor and leaned against the desk, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths. Inhale, exhale, he thought, inhale, exhale. He had to get out or he was going to go crazy! And without further thought he pushed the door open, slammed the door behind his back with as much force as he could muster and marched towards the stairs and the door to the garden.

A night's sleep in the mansion hadn't made it any less creepy. The portraits still glared at him like they knew he didn't belong, but it wasn't only that. Oh no, one of the previous residents had been an avid hunter and had seen fit decorate the walls of the place with dead animals. Large boar heads with stiff, brown fur and curvy tusks, deer heads with tall, sharp antlers, whole stuffed wild ducks and pure snow white swans sitting on top of tables and drawers and any other flat surfaces. They all had black or blue glass eyes that glittered in the light that seemed dim despite the curtains being wide open. Those eyes followed him as he walked past them. Just how had Sirius managed to turn out so normal, living in this place and raised by that woman?

The door to the garden was part of a whole wall of glass. Beyond it was a terrace made of blue stones that contained wrought iron table with curvy legs and matching iron chairs with soft, red cushions. On the door was a fingerprint scanner that seemed to taunt Harry. You could get out by pressing a little green button on the side, but without a recognized fingerprint, you couldn't get back in. Never mind, Harry decided, he didn't need the door anyway. So he pressed it open and stepped into the garden.

There wasn't much to see. It was surely very lush and beautiful later in she spring and once summer came, but now the old oaks and the poplar trees, carefully cut to pyramid shapes, were bare and the roses weren't even budding yet. Still, it was fresh air, as fresh as air got in London anyway, and Harry wandered around without hurry or destination. There were little stone paths that crossed the yard, disappearing between rose bushes and trees, leading to a small, creamy white summerhouse and another to a fountain where the water streamed from a cornucopia held by a naked maiden made of reddish stone. Harry was watching it impassively when intentionally heavy steps sounded behind him.

It was one of Black's security guards, a man so big he could have almost been Hagrid's little brother, though much better groomed – and Hagrid couldn't have pulled off that kind of non-descript face if his life had depended on it. He was wearing gray trousers, black blazer with a white shirt under it. Harry wouldn't have worn anything that looked like that to a job where it might get ruined. His name tag read SECURITY first and under it in smaller CEM MILHAVE.

"Excuse me, young master, but it has come to my attention that your fingerprints haven't yet been added to the security database. If you have time now…" He took a scanner from his utility belt, a small thing that, when flipped open, somewhat resembled a cell phone except for the extra "screen" at the bottom, the scanning surface.

They were keeping an eye on him? There were probably cameras all around the mansion. Harry squished the impulse to shout at the man; it wouldn't have done him much good and he would rather shout at Black. Instead he offered his right hand, his fingers splayed wide.

"Please press one finger at a time against the glowing surface. Once it dims briefly you may switch the finger," the man said with a pleasant voice. He was smiling to Harry as well. Would this man care if I told him I was held here against my will, Harry wondered. He had to conclude he probably wouldn't. He resisted the urge to kick the man.

If he kept suppressing violent urges like this he would burst soon. Just one giant explosion and the walls would be covered with reluctant heir.

"I liked it much better when the bad guys aren't acting all nice," he muttered under his breath. If the man heard, he pretended he didn't. He pressed his fingers on the scanner one by one.

"Our biometric fingerprint scanners have a panic feature; all of your fingerprints were scanned and the middle finger is designated as the panic finger. When this finger is used on the scanner, it behaves like any other finger that was scanned, but also trips a silent alarm," the man instructed him further as he entered the setting into the database. This made Harry snort; if someone wanted his help to rob this place he wasn't going to spoil their fun.

"That is good to know," he said neutrally and the man excused himself, disappearing much more silently than when he had first approached Harry. Great, now he felt like a skittish animal people were trying to placate.

The garden and fresh air had been ruined to him now. The sky seemed much darker and the wind felt chillier and watching at the naked statue made him feel even colder. And he wanted back home and he wanted back to school and Merlin help him, he even missed the terrible kidney-heavy cuisine. Black would probably try to feed him snails and other disgusting delicacies at some point. He had read from somewhere that lobsters needed to be boiled alive…

He gave himself a mental kick to the behind and decided to think positive thoughts. For all her posturing Black didn't seem very experienced at keeping people under lock and key. Harry had a free access to a computer so even if he hadn't retained the possession of the phone, which he had – and that would have been completely useless hadn't he been provided with a charger – he could have called help anyway. Then again, maybe she was confident no one would rescue Harry. If she wasn't exaggerating, the authorities were in her pockets and Harry as good as adopted already, and Harry didn't think she was. It wasn't like she thought Harry would ever ask help from the rebels who had "kidnapped" him. Oh, the irony!

Lost in thought he wandered aimlessly some more until the path took him around the corner and there Harry paused. Instead of green fields or flower beds, behind the mansion was a large tarmac field with a white circle with what seemed to be capital H in the middle painted in the middle of it. A helicopter platform, he realized, Walburga Black had her own helicopter platform. Going t Heathrow must have been too plebeian for her tastes. There was a large hangar behind it that was built of some dark wood with slight golden sheen, rather than metal. Some kind of green vine crept up the sides of it. Harry wondered, briefly, what it looked like inside, what kind of helicopter the woman kept there. It would be nice if he could fly one. He would just take it right back to Uganda.

Harry sighed and turned around, returning inside. It would be easier if he just put up with this and read those chapters. He would get out of here soon enough. He wasn't sure if Black was really spiteful enough to get Dudley expelled just to put him in line, but he didn't want to test it.

* * *

Dorothy Catalonia was drinking iced coffee and her grandfather Duke Dermail was stirring his tea. It was an afternoon ritual of theirs. Not a very frequent one; his business and Romefeller kept Dermail a very busy man and often they spent long stretches of time on entirely different continents. But whenever they resided under the same roof, they would take tea together. Their "Golden Afternoon" originated from after Dorothy's parents died and she first came into her grandfather's care.

They were sitting in his study, as he called the room, though it was so cluttered actually studying there would have required very thorough cleaning. The staff was forbidden from entering the room and as neither Duke Dermail nor his granddaughter were used to menial work the place tended to be in throes of barely controlled chaos. Dorothy had made room for their tea set and unearthed a beautiful table made of wrought iron and glass by putting four books, a laptop, an espresso maker still in its box – it was a Christmas gift Dermail had never gotten to unpacking – two ebook readers and a pencil set on the desk, on top of a book case and, in the coffee maker box's case, on the floor. She had considered cleaning the desk and very quickly decided against it.

"I wish for one, just one person who could resist spouting tired clichés at me. Do you have any idea how many insipid boys think themselves oh so clever when they ask me if my red shoes are magical?" Red was one of Dorothy's favorite colors and her red haute couture Adeen Kashas were very much THE topic in her school. Sadly the conversation wasn't exactly witty. Her grandfather made vaguely sympathetic noises into his tea, but Dorothy hadn't really expected anything more.

Dorothy Catalonia was called an A-grade bitch behind her back and she was more aware of the identities of the people doing so than they probably thought. She wasn't terribly offended, however. If being self-assured, witty and at ease with her own attractiveness, knowing what she wanted in life and being willing to work hard towards her goals made Dorothy a bitch then fine! Most of her peers didn't think any further than the next party and if that was the norm she was glad to not meet the standards. If she was considered uncanny because she intimidated good-for-nothing teenagers with the spine of an oyster and the brains of a bird the so be it. Stop the press, she thought and picked a little pesto snack from the plate. Dorothy Catalonia was a confirmed bitch.

But Walburga Black was a witch. Dorothy clearly remembered wishing, when she had been but ten years old, that her name meant that she could melt the horrible woman into green mess on the luxurious Persian carpet with a well-aimed bucket of water. The unfortunate first impression of the woman had been the _best _impression she had ever made on Dorothy. Thus, when her grandfather informed her that Dame Black had decided to adopt a young, orphaned relation she reacted with uncharacteristic pity.

"She has already ruined two sons and one of her nieces hasn't spoken with her for oven thirteen years after she spent one summer in her house and now she has taken in a new child? Some people just don't know when to quit," she scoffed and sipped her frappuccino, remembering of the news of the elder son, Sirius Black, escaping some African prison. What a sorry state for such an old family. Her grandfather gave her an admonishing look.

"This may be good news for the family. I have decided to initiate talks about the possibility of a marriage between the heirs of the families once both have come of age," he said with a gentle but firm voice. The cup in Dorothy's hand froze in the air halfway between her mouth and the tabletop.

Duke Dermail Catalonia was the one who had raised Dorothy and it was his hand could be seen in her nature. They were both strong-willed, ambitious and prone to make decisions based on logic rather than fleeting, ephemeral emotion. But even then Dorothy was a fifteen-year-old girl and her logic had its limits.

"I don't want to marry her son. Do you really want her as an in-law?" she asked, betrayal tingling in her stomach. She could see how it would be a good match, yes, a marriage of convenience made in Heaven. And she would never given then time of the day to any common riff-raff, she had standards and one of those was that a man was her equal in everything, monetary side of things as well beauty and intelligence. An ugly man would be a tragedy, but a dumb one would be even worse.

She was ready and eager to make a good choice based on logic and compatibility, but she had always thought that her doting grandfather would allow her to be the one to make that choice.

"Don't you trust me?" she asked. She finished her cup with a swift swallow set in on the glass table with a harsh clink. She made sure to meet his eyes.

"It isn't that I think you would make a bad choice of husbands, but the heir to the Black fortune is the best choice there is. Walburga isn't a young woman any more either; the boy, Harry Dursley, will inherit soon." Grandfather smiled to her in that way of his (that meant he was remembering what it had been like to be young, or at least that was what he would have claimed. At times Dorothy wondered if he hadn't purposefully forgotten the feeling of possibilities, of he world being open and everything being for the grabbing so he wouldn't have missed it so.

"Harry? Is that short for Harold?" Dorothy wondered, as her grandfather rarely used nicknames even, of close acquaintances.

"It isn't short for anything. He is originally from an upper middle-class family and is a bit younger than you are, thirteen…"

"You want me to marry a prepubescent boy?" Thirteen, the word repeated itself in her head in an endless loop, thirteen! She had two younger cousins, twelve and thirteen respectively, and they still collected _Elemental Monster_ cards and watched _Dea Invicta_ and its evil nanomachine-releasing zombie-animating mobile suits. Now Dorothy didn't only feel stifled, she felt like a pedophile.

"He won't be prepubescent when you marry, of course." Duke Dermail's sigh sounded a lot more patient that what he truly felt like, coming out as a low whoosh. "He may seem very young to you now, but the age gap will narrow once you both grow older." That was true, of course, but it failed to make Dorothy feel any better now.

"I will have to think about this," she said and rose from the chair. She didn't smile to her grandfather. He shook his head sadly. She raised an eyebrow, silently asking permission to leave, he conceded a nod and she turned and walked out of the room, not slamming the door. That was the point.

She went to her room, but only to grab her gym clothes; a red T-shirt and cute little shorts. Their Lyon home had a fully equipped gym and several trainers at her beck and call and Dorothy summoned her aerobic instructor for a quick work-out. She would have preferred fencing, but the first rule of combat sports was that they shouldn't be attempted when angry and behind her cool, sky blue eyes, Dorothy was boiling, the taste of iron rising to her tongue.

His grandfather had been reasonably caring guardian to her, if a bit distant out of necessity. When had she come to love him enough to feel this betrayed now?

The instructor, Mr Oriole, was a tall, thin man with lips that seemed to pout even when he was happy and whose voice was very effeminate, much like the token gay in a bad sitcom, and his French accent hardly helped the matter. He was also twice as ruthless a taskmaster as her fencing instructor was.

"Not like that! Let the music become you, move you! Quicker, don't move so sharp, flow from one position to another!" he ordered, basic right, basic left, jumping jack and rocking horse. So she leapt and slid and stretched her body, her movements stubbornly sharp and her choice of music aggressive, until her legs felt so weak they might give up under her, and after that her whole body became feathery light, entering that euphoria beyond tired when Dorothy always felt she could do anything. She jumped up and down, surrounded by ceiling-high mirrors on every side, seventeen Dorothy's jumping and twirling with her, blond hair plastered against her face with sweat.

"Enough," she eventually breathed and leaned on her knees. When she looked at the clock above the door she was surprised to realize almost two hours had gone by. She was ravenous and her stomach grumbled in a most embarrassing way. She was red as a tomato, red as a fire truck from the exercising.

"I hope you are feeling better now!" Mr Oriole shouted after her as she walked towards the changing room and the heavenly, cool, refreshing shower, causing her cheeks to redden further.

But the cool water washed away the fury the work-out hadn't burned to cinders. Having calmed down, Dorothy concluded things weren't as bad as they had seemed at first glance. The talks hadn't even started yet, there was a good chance the betrothal wouldn't come to be. Also, as this Harry was two years younger than her and according to Alliance laws a person had to be sixteen to marry with their guardians' permission –or eighteen without permission. She would have three grace years instead of just half a year were she to marry a peer or someone older. She also conceded her grandfather's point, Walburga Black wasn't a young woman anymore, and brain aneurysms ran in her family. She might die and then the boy, who hadn't been raised in her circles and most likely had all kinds of ideas about a love match, would cancel the whole thing.

Of course, it was possible that Harry would turn out a good match for her. Maybe his young age and humble origins could prove a good thing, allowing her to tutor him, mold him into a suitable husband. Love was a bonus if it formed, but if it didn't it wasn't as if they couldn't both have their distractions after all, as long as they made sure all their children were born in wedlock. What was marriage, at the end of a day, but a legal paper? And in Romefeller foundation, "legal" was a very relative term.

* * *

Hands down, the best feature of this miserable place is having my own bathroom, Harry decided. Decorated with green and shiny white stone counter tops and white and green tiles, it was bigger than the Gryffindor common room had been. It had a tiny sauna that looked rather like a shower stall with curved glass front, just big enough for two people to sit in and not jab each other between ribs with their elbows and the best feature of all, a whirlpool bath. Harry always wanted a whirlpool bath.

Another point in the room's favor: it was No. 1 in his list of Places Where There Probably Aren't Any Cameras.

"My problem is that I'm a three trick pony right now," Harry muttered as he ran himself a bath. He never really appreciated the wealth of things he learned to do at Hogwarts before he had to try and replicate them without a wand.

While the bath was filled Harry sat on the edge of it, holding a blue toothbrush on his open palm. He'd had to rip it off the plastic container the night before and. Everything else in the bathroom was equally brand new from the cloudy-soft towels to uncorked bottles of shampoo and conditioner and at least seven kinds of soap. Someone had even bought him a small safety razor and that had made him almost giggle. He glared at the toothbrush.

"Wingardium leviosa," he commanded it, drawing from the wellspring within. The toothbrush twitched, but remained on his palm. Harry tried again, this time he imagined it rising into the air above his hand, but nothing happened.

"Wingardium leviosa," he said and remembered Mr Bing's Adam's apple bobbing up and down when he very carefully intoned Sweet Water War. Now he felt a slight tug as the toothbrush flew up above his head, as if dangling from an invisible string. "Don't tell me I actually have to do this every time?" he groaned.

Once the bathtub was filled he undressed and slipped in, wondering what he should try to do next. The bath, however, was just as hot and relaxing and pampering, massaging his back and shoulders once he positioned himself just right, and it was hard to remember he was here to practice covertly. Expelliarmus would have been a good spell, but the need of a partner to practice it with made it a no go. Mmhhnnmm, Harry hummed and leaned back some more, his mind blanking for a moment. Reducto would have been useful as well, but practicing that would leave marks and make a lot of noise. Flying… Harry really wanted to fly again, but enchanting a broom probably required a lot of spells and spells he didn't know at that. Besides, even if he had known how, trying to fly in the bathroom would have been plain silly. Also, he lacked the broom and while he was almost certain he could turn his toothbrush into a broom… no. Alohomora seemed like a good idea at first glance, but he could already bypass closed doors so he wanted to learn something more useful.

After a while he settled for the summoning charm. It was a bit dull choice, but Harry forced himself to be practical. It was easy to use, easy to practice without alarming anyone and it could be very useful to grab objects without going to them. As a bonus it could be used like the disarming curse too. Maybe it could even be used to disarm multiple opponents at the same time. Harry gave the towel cupboard a calculating look.

Harry thought about what he had read of the charm; he now wished he had appreciated more of Hermione's tendency to give spell books as presents. The charm could be used in two ways: by casting the charm, and then naming the object that was summoned or just by pointing the wand at the object during or immediately following the incantation to pull it toward the user. In either case, concentrating on the object was necessary in order for the charm to succeed, but the caster didn't necessarily need to know the location if they said the name of the object. But supposing he said "Accio gun" and there were several people with guns? If he didn't point at a specific one would he get them all, or just one? He closed his eyes and purposefully, carefully, brought the picture of Mathilda Sisulu into his mind in the red and black glory of the graffiti he had seen. Something warm and wiggling inside him immediately hardened into a sizzling ball, awaiting his orders.

"Accio towel!" he called. Not _a _towel, but just towel. He felt the tendrils reach towards the cupboard, but they couldn't grab and just slid off. Harry frowned. Using parseltongue had helped before and picturing the spell in effect had helped as well.

"_Accio towel,_" he hissed and pictured in his mind the soft, red and beige and green towels flying towards him. Again, he could feel his magic move, but no more. "So this is going to be more like when I tried to apparate the first time, huh?"

By the time he managed the feat, the water cooled to lukewarm and the wrinkles on his fingers formed deep canyons. Ultimately, he met with success after he remembered the time Peeves threw the Gryffindor breakfast plates all over the Great Hall. A plate of toast and eggs had flown straight to his face and he had only managed to duck at the last second. So Harry imagined. Harry had been briefly distracted wondering where the new plates and food had come from, since Dumbledore hadn't done that, but that wasn't the issue now. So he imagined a gaggle of invisible little poltergeist hands grabbing the towels and flying to him. The wooden door of the cupboard opened and hit the wall behind. Seven towels flew towards him, red, beige and green, all embroidered with the Black crest, and he caught two, but the rest had dropped into the bathtub and were instantly soaked.

Harry he draped the wet towels on the open cupboard and sauna doors and on racks or hooks on the walls. The maid would find this odd, certainly. What would they think of him? Was it normal to want the maids think highly of you? At least he had upgraded into a four-trick pony, he thought as he dressed in a white shirt and dress pants. The progress was progressing.

Harry gave his room a wary look as he exited the bathroom. He sure as hell _hoped _there weren't any cameras there, but since Black didn't trust him yet he wouldn't have put it below her to give him a room that was under surveillance. But he took comfort in that he wouldn't have to deal with it much longer. When he called Luna, she told him someone was coming to rescue him. He wondered who would come. Quatre would be nice and so would Duo, but Duo was busy in Africa for sure. On the other hand, there were three other pilots as well and it might be nice to meet one of them. He tried to imagine what they might be like, boys not much older than himself, but they stubbornly came out as blends of Duo and Quatre. Maybe someone oriental instead, or of African descent, or even a girl?

He had dressed in the bathroom to avoid potential voyeurs so he was ready when someone knocked. Thus far nothing good came from people knocking in this place.

"Come in," he called, wary. A plump woman with bushy, brown hair opened the door, twisting a lock of hair around her forefinger. Other than the hair she didn't resemble Hermione much, her attitude least of all and she was an adult to boot, but Harry still felt like something had been stuck in his throat.

"Dame Black would see you now, young master," she said with high-pitched voice and lowered her eyes and Harry realized she was ashamed.

"It's all right. This isn't your fault or anything," he said and she blushed before turning and escaping quickly in a twirl of dark skirts and white apron.

"Where am I supposed to go to?" Harry shouted after her. The fleeing steps stopped.

"I will show you the way," her small voice replied. Harry could only hear her because he had already entered the hallway. He walked to her and she still refused to meet his eyes. Well, at least someone felt sorry for him.

"What is your name, Ma'am?" he asked as he followed her upstairs somewhere.

"I am Lillian Spelt, young master," she answered. She was holding her shoulders tight, as if bracing for a blow.

"I am Harry Dursley, it's nice to meet you," he said and muttered under his breath: "Unlike several other people here." He tried to engage her in a conversation, he truly did, but she wouldn't answer with two words if one was enough. Soon she led him to a typically gloomy room that was at least lightened up by a fireplace. Real, live fire always seemed very beautiful to Harry and Hogwarts' fireplaces had only highlighted that.

Walburga Black was sitting in a poisonous green arm chair, drinking tea from a little teacup. Harry thought briefly of another teacup and Edgar and Luna. She turned her cold, sharp eyes to Harry as he entered and he didn't blame Lillian at all for curtsying and escaping the room as quickly as she could. The fire cast pleasant golden glow and mischievous shadows all around the room, leaving the corners in darkness.

"An old acquaintance of mine, Duke Dermail, has extended us an invitation," she said and paused, presumably to give Harry time to be awed by the thought of knowing a real duke. "We will fly to his new villa in Kemet in two days. I assume he wishes to show off."

"Seems to be a common problem around here," said Harry who though Black had to be the world's biggest hypocrite to complain about someone else showing off.

Oh shit, he would switch continents again. He needed to call Luna again before the pre-paid subscription expired.

"You will enjoy this," Dame Walburga Black stated and it sounded more like a threat than anything else.

* * *

AN: I have a new beta! Many thanks to Mystic777 for helping me deliver this fanfic ^_^

I always wondered how the "Perfect Soldier" could be so bad at going undercover. This is the explanation I came up with.

Doctor J is supposed to "have an avuncular relationship with Heero". I fail to see that, but whatever.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter II: Team Harry strikes back!**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

It wasn't in Dudley Dursley's nature to wake up early for all the health, wealth and wisdom in the world. He was the type who remained up till it was past midnight, chatting with his friends and watching movies, and then had to be poked awake by his brother after he shut down the alarm clock the next morning. So when he sneaked down the stairs of his home to the kitchen when the clock wasn't even six yet, taking care to not wake up his parents, he was acting against his nature. He only ate yogurt and bread because he didn't know how to cook bacon and eggs and it would have taken too much time even if he had; half past six was when his parents would wake up, his dad to go to work and his mum to make breakfast.

Dudley was hungry and tired, but the day before he had heard some random rich bitch had decided to steal his brother and the police were all saying they couldn't do a thing. The police chief – or commissar or head police, whatever – had called them just to say that adopting orphans wasn't illegal, like Harry had been some stray in an orphanage! He could barely believe it, even the next day. He had woken up in his own bed and thought for a blessed minute it had all been a bad dream. This kind of thing didn't happen in England. Uganda and Russia and other places like that, yes, and the colonies that were Wild West In Space, but not England. England was a state of law.

Then the implications of waking up in his own bed and not in his Smeltings' dorm room had sunk in and he had almost thrown up on his bed sheets from it. Soldiers had come to threaten them into silence soon after Harry had been taken away. And bribe them, of course, the carrot to the stick, but that wasn't… He remembered the cold drop in his stomach as he had watched the butt of the gun sticking from the holster of the cold-eyed man. It was a real gun, the kind that killed people. It was so different from the movies. Harry had been taken away somewhere and his father was going to go to his job just like every day because he couldn't afford to get fired and the world didn't stop spinning even though it should have and… Dudley took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

He wasn't taking this lying down. He was hungry and he was tired, but above all he was mad as hell.

Dudley put his glass and spoon into the dishwasher and sneaked to the cupboard under the stairs. It had been his and Harry's favorite hiding place when they had been small; they had crawled in and refused to come out when they were angry with their mum and dad. It smelled the same it always had, dust and mothballs and the sharp tang of cleaning products that Dudley thought was kind of comforting, really, but that kind of silly rabbit sentimentality was for kids. He took a backpack he had packed the night before. Most of the space was taken by the spare wheel for a golf cart he had liberated from the garage. It was a solid-rubber tire, the kind that wouldn't blow if something sharp poked it. There was just enough room in the bag for a coil of rope – and people said watching TV was bad for you.

It was still pretty dark outside. The street lights had already gone out, but the sun was only peeking behind the houses. It was quiet too; not as quiet as inside, but Dudley wasn't used to streets with so little noise. He amused himself with imagining this was one of those zombie apocalypse movies where the world had gone quiet and he had to survive by his wits and secrecy. But in the end it wasn't quiet enough for that and he wasn't in the mood for fun anyway. Dudley walked briskly to the tube station nearest their house and found himself a seat, sitting down. The station was already brimming with noisy people who didn't give him a second look. Someone was smoking even though it wasn't allowed, right under the NO SMOKING sign. There was a fat man in a gray suit next to him, eating a sandwich. It made Dudley's mouth water, but he stared firmly straight to at the wall in front of him.

He didn't usually travel by tube because it was crowded and smelly and full of cast-iron idiots who stopped at the top or bottom of escalators, dragged their granny bags ten meters behind them and tripped up anybody trying to walk past them. Others stopped walking suddenly for no reason and stared blankly at the card readers like they were that quantum rubbish Harry was so fond of. Besides, he had to walk to the station and car took him right where he wanted to go to. He was a bit unnerved, though he wasn't going to let it show. In his back pocket burned a map he had downloaded from the net. Circled with red was the mansion of the woman who had taken Harry away.

The train arrived with a mighty screech and Dudley checked it was the right one. It was as horrible as he remembered: everyone was pressed tightly up against each other and they were glaring at him for no reason when he just pushed them away to get more room, cheap headphones leaked half-heard music all over the place, the sour scent of sweat stung his nose and people stepped on his feet. It couldn't end quickly enough.

In contrast Fitzbury Hill was a good neighbourhood. It was fancier than fancy, with big houses and huge gardens around them, surrounded by high fences or walls. Dudley eyed the walls and black, sharp metal spikes and he walked slowly towards the right mansion – it was just a few houses away, but that was a long way there – and thought of the golf cart wheel on his backpack. He had learned it from a movie; you tied a rope to the wheel, threw it to the top of a metal pike of a fence, climbed up the rope and manoeuvred yourself to the other side. Easy as pie, right? Except Dudley was beginning to remember he had never been that good at climbing ropes in the gym…

Turned out that didn't matter any. When Dudley got to the biggest of the houses, a castle-like mansion, he could have cried of frustration. Of course that vile, stupid broad had picked one with a wall without anything to throw the wheel at.

"Freaking bitch and her freaking stupid mansion," he cursed and walked past the main gates, trying to look inconspicuous.

The wall was high and Dudley could see the mansion far in the distance, behind some tree tops. The morning sun glittered in stripes of glass visible between the branches and turned the tops of sharp towers golden and red. Dudley was already breathing heavily and his feet were aching when he walked around the mansion, searching for a way in. There had to be other gates than the huge double gates with a speaker phone and a code lock and two, angry-looking, burly men standing in front of them. Didn't the staff use a door of their own in movies? So why not a gate of their own as well?

The backpack made his shoulders ache and Dudley took it off, setting it to lean against the wall with a huff. It was black with a silver guitar's sound board printed on it. It only had a stupid, useless wheel and little rope and Dudley was going to miss the bag if someone stole it; after a few steps he felt foolish, returned and emptied it instead. He walked around the corner and just as he was beginning to think he would have to walk around the whole place and maybe there wasn't other gates a red and bright yellow van drove past him and after a good while stopped in front of a patch of wall that from Dudley's perspective looked the same as any other part. Then the wall opened and he realized there _was _a gate. Dudley sprinted into run, as fast as he could, and all tiredness was gone. He felt the hot itch he always felt when some stupid snitch needed their faces broken, it begun from his fists and flowed up to his chest.

There was someone who could take him to Harry. Dudley was going to get him back!

The car didn't waste any time. A small, metal-shining red truck or trolley drove out, a few boxes were loaded on it and the men in red and yellow uniforms closed the van's back door, walking to the cabin. It was just like those movies where the hero drove his mobile suit past closing hangar doors in the nick of time. The car drove past him. The trolley backed into the garden and the gates were closing in front of Dudley with a quiet hum. But he ran harder than he had ever thought he could and leapt, ending up on his knees on the stone path inside and the gates behind him went CLANG! It was like a prison's gates closing, but at least the woman looked harmless.

* * *

Esther Corel wasn't in his element as he hid in a bush with Bakwa and Kadokechi. He had been a spacer for a long time and sat years in prison after that; he had forgotten how harsh mistress Mother Earth could be. The sun had already risen above the horizon, but the storm clouds were so heavy it was still dark. The only light came from the camp in front of them and in sudden, bright bursts as the lightning struck again and again. Esther was miserable and wet and he feared a bit for his life, but this was an important mission.

Their Umoja cell was planning to build an underground network to smuggle dissidents and politically important people to the North Africa Union and Kemet kingdom, the cities of Ouagadougou and Luxor as a few of the final destinations. Despite their protests the first people to send out were Matthew Sisulu and Hallow Nguen, despite their protests. Once they got to the more peaceful north the sailing would be relatively smooth, but in the south they would need the camouflage of registered army trucks.

"I hope this goes well," he muttered under his breath, and as no-one answered he thought maybe they didn't hear. The camp, a fence in the process of being built, the shapes of tents in the rain and the lights loomed in front of him.

According to Bakwa, the commander of the old headquarters had been a slacker, mainly interested in participating in the black market trade and selling the goods to his own men at inflated prices. He had kept his job by marrying the general's sister and cutting his brother-in-law in on the profits. He had been killed by a stray brick thrown by a protester half-blind from tear gas to the head when he had been inspecting the subduing of a demonstration. His replacement was made of sterner stuff. It wasn't just that the camp had sober conscripts in it, the old commander's minimum requiremen for a well-ran base. It had sober forces building a fence in a thunderstorm at the crack of dawn.

"Habib, give your rifle to Kadokechi," Bakwa said. "The AK147 is a dead rebel giveaway. Kadokechi, you will stand rear guard. We're going shopping." Esther swallowed a lump from his throat and looked at his beloved, shielding his eyes with his hand from the heavy fall of rain. In her greens and a pistol by her side, Bakwa looked stern and suddenly so harsh, like an entirely different woman to the one he remembered from the long-ago happy days of their courtship. It was so dark a morning he couldn't really see her face well, only a black shape and the glint of her eyes.

It wasn't an Oz facility. This made the mission possible to perform with just three men – only just. He wanted to prove to Bakwa she could count on him, only he wasn't too sure himself. It was a well protected new base. The government forces had just caused the Umoja bad losses the day before and no rebel in their right mind was going to stroll in to raid the garage.

"The ABC of military strategy," Bakwa said. "Always do the last thing you're expected to. If a guard asks questions, act cool and say hello. If it's an officer, act stupid but respectful. The conscripts get away with not knowing a lot."

"You're a smart lady, ma'am,' Kadokechi said. Esther turned to give the more muscular man –who was much more at ease on his knees in the mud and under the watchtower's scope, damn it – a hairy look.

"You aren't the one walking out there and trying a Saturday morning cartoon strategy," he blamed his new comrade.

"True enough," Kadokechi said and smiled unapologetically. "Better you than me, especially without a rifle."

Bakwa didn't comment, buttoning her jacket. She wore one that was too small, so her breasts got squashed flat; she wasn't that curvy to begin with and like this she managed to pass for a young man, at least at distance or in dark. Esther thought she would have a reason to feel very insulted if someone made that mistake from up close when they could see her face, but he was admittedly biased.

They put their ploy into action, Esther leaning into Bakwa, letting his arm hang limp by his side. They only splashed, or rather hobbled with Bakwa's arms around him, three wet steps before there was a gun pointing at us.

"What the hell you doing back here," the guard demanded with a rough voice, making Esther flinch and yelp. He was part of the National Guard, with waterproof boots and the red and black presidential shield embroidered on his jacket. They had planned for this; the left sleeve of his general, army-like coat had been torn and dyed red and under it were strips of torn cloth, dyed red as well. He showed the arm and the guard turned his flashlight towards it.

"I was cutting wood for the fence and cut myself, sir," he said and his voice only trembled a little. Bakwa was holding him upright, quiet. The guard started laughing.

"You're one dumb-ass conscript, aren't you?" he said, but pointed them towards the tent with a red cross sign above it. Esther's heart hammered almost painfully as he allowed Bakwa to lead him past the man, barely able to believe they weren't being shot.

They walked past several rows of tents, all different colors and sizes and obviously belonging to mercenaries. The march sloped gently to the south and the tents on lower ground were flooded. They walked past the Red Cross tent and into the depot. There about twenty trucks and tankers parked up. Coolly Bakwa opened one of the truck doors to see if the keys were in the ignitions. Now they only had to bluff a requisition papers for themselves and while this wasn't an Oz base Esther couldn't help but wonder when his sweet, sweet love had turned into a soldier with nerves like sharp ribbons of steel.

He went along with the plan. They needed to send those people safely to Luxor and Esther fully intended to carry his weight to the last gram.

* * *

Luna Lovegood was the object of a frantic search of every sweeper in the city. She felt bad about it, truly and honestly, but she couldn't have done anything else. Sometimes things were clearer to her, sometimes just pale hunches, but she was pretty sure she needed to get to further south still. In front of her was a delivery van. It was painted bright yellow and there was a picture of a winged brown paper package on the side of it, along with beautiful, curvy Arabian letters Luna wished she could read. She liked the van and she liked the small, plump woman with red scarf tied around her head.

The men sweating in their green uniforms made her worry, though. It wasn't nice green at all, but the kind of green that made her think of poisonous snakes and plants with prickly leaves. They were speaking to the woman with angry, clipped tones, with words that exploded against their teeth like gunpowder. That was the way Draco Malfoy had spoken to Harry so often. The woman was shaking her head. Luna was watching them all from the shadows of a narrow, but almost painfully clean alley.

"I have_ a delivery to make, I can not hand the van over to you, even if you have a warrant. If the delivery is late we will have to pay compensation! It will be out of my pay check, if I don't get fired!_" the words dropped from her lips and her left arm was making small, circular movements. There was something in her right hand that she had squeezed into a fist and pressed against her breast.

"_You will be arrested for resisting a lawful takeover if you don't hand the keys over now!_" the man with most stripes on his shoulder growled.

The particulars escaped Luna, but she knew what the soldiers wanted. The houses were whitewashed and the sand got everywhere so the soldiers didn't even have shiny boots and the sun was beating down on them like a hammer, but it was just like in Hogwarts when her books and quills disappeared from time to time. It was mean people who took other people's precious things just because they could. Here was evil to be thwarted. Luna closed her eyes.

Pastel colours, Harry had said. Pale, soft yellow was a good colour and pink flattered her complexion. She thought of flowers, but they didn't grow for her here, in the dry sand the sun was beating so mercilessly. Luna frowned and tried to think of butterflies instead, but… No butterflies, a mirage. Mirage of wonderful, vibrant colours that rose from the dull brown dust of the road as the golden rays made the air quiver. A yellow knee-length plaited skirt with a pink stripe at the hem and a white blouse with pink sailor-style collar. Ribbons, Harry had said ribbons so Luna imagined long yellow and pink strips of clothe that tied her hair up in pigtails. Luna took a step inside the mirage. It tickled her skin as the air rippled and rippled, making her giggle a bit. But this was serious business; she opened her eyes, a determined frown now between them.

The woman had backed to the door to the car's cabin and her face was grayish under the cardamom tan. She extended her arm to the soldiers' leader with a trembling hand, her fingers unfurling slowly. The sergeant-type soldier made an impatient noise in the back of his throat and made a move towards the hand, making the woman flinch.

"Stop in the name of the Nargle!" Luna shouted and jumped from the shadows of the smaller street between to high buildings, almost causing a pedestrian to stumble on her. "Final Nargle Invoker Luna has arrived!"

The soldiers' backs had been turned to her, but now they turned around. This made Luna happy because attacking people whose backs were turned to you was the kind of thing villains did and she didn't want to be a dark magical girl. She would need a tragic past for that and her first love, once she got a first love, would never be hers. And that would be terrible.

The soldiers were very tall and they all had similar, small and stubby moustache. Two of them were watching her like she had grown a second head and the youngest opened and closed his mouth several times like a gold fish before he started talking.

"Who are you, miss? You shouldn't be walking alone." His sentences were short and blocky and his accent was thick. He was rubbing the side of his head so his beret went askew.

"I am a magical girl and I'm here to stop you. Please abandon your thieving, villainous ways and become good members of the society or I will have to stop you," Luna pleaded with them. They all frowned, but the youngest, the one who had talked to her, looked to the side. The only thing there was a bare, white wall so Luna thought he must be ashamed.

"Where are your parents, little girl? Do they know you go around hindering soldiers doing their work?" the sergeant-type asked and walked towards him, shoulders wide and head proudly up. Luna raised her hand with open palm towards the men.

"Luna-Luna Higher Moral Standards Beam!" she shouted and let loose her sadness at the way they were treating the woman. It wasn't something she had ever really understood. What she had seen of things, going out of your way to treat people badly and embarrass or oppress them took a lot more effort than living and letting live. She couldn't comprehend why it was so popular and she knew this was good for her. The sadness made her whole body feel so heavy, like the sky was pressing her down. She could feel the fibres of her socks pressing little prints against her skin and her mouth tasted unfair and scared like the blood candies that were meant for vampires. All this she directed towards the men.

It wasn't a beam, not really. There was no light and no sound, but this didn't keep the men from bursting in tears. The leader lifted slowly his fingers to his cheek, then held them in front of his eyes like he couldn't believe the tears were running down his cheeks. His shoulders were shaking, but he didn't make a sound. The young one pressed his hands on his face and made small, keening sounds and the last of the men draped his arms around the woman to cry against her shoulder. She was making small, startled noises deep in her throat, patting the soldier's back at the same time. No expression crossed her face at all. Luna watched this with light chest, like she had inhaled helium.

"_I'm really sorry, I won't do it again_," the man promised and the soothing patting hitched for a small while.

They hadn't been the only people on the street, naturally. Streets were made so people would walk and drive on them. Brown and beige and broken colours for men, bright red and green and blue for women, cars and motorcycles and bicycles, though sadly no unicycles, the carnival of colours and noises had passed the van by, leaving a wide space around it. Everyone had looked the other way before; not at all like Harry would have done Luna concluded and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. As avidly as they had avoided the scene before, they couldn't stop staring now. Cars were slowing down as they passed and angry horns were blowing behind them, but those cars slowed down as well.

"_I'm so sorry. Hell. I have been such a bastard, and people have gotten into trouble because I liked proving who was the boss, and I shouldn't feel like this but… Why did I do those things? Am I really like this?_" the leader stuttered. Silent stares were his only answer.

"Maybe you should go to your homes and think about what you have done," Luna proposed and patted the man to his arm. She would have patted his shoulder, but he was too tall for her to do so comfortably. One by one the men nodded and made wet sounds and left, leaving the woman and Luna alone in the empty circle. The woman was giving Luna a strange look. She gave her best smile and walked to the van, climbing inside. Maybe if she was polite enough the woman would give her a lift as a thank you.

The woman opened the driver's side door, but didn't come in.

"Hi, I am Final Nargle Invoker Luna. Who are you?" Luna asked and gestured the woman to come inside. The woman was chewing on her lower lip so hard Luna was afraid it would bleed soon, but she did as Luna said and sat on the driver's seat, clicking the seat belt on without looking, fumbling a lot at first.

"Yo-your clothes. They changed," the woman whispered and pointed towards Luna's tunic-dress with a finger that only trembled a little. Luna looked down and frowned a little. She had allowed the mirage to dispel since she didn't need it anymore, the colors bleeding into thin air. Maybe the woman thought there should have been an actual magical girl transformation? But Luna didn't want to be naked in public even if it was only for a short while. Even if she was inside a car; it had windows after all.

"Don't tell anyone. I'm trying my best, really," she asked. Actually, if she remembered right she wasn't supposed to transform in front of people anyway, unless they were her comrades. But she needed the woman's help. "Where are you going to?"

The seats were soft, but they were some faux leather and hot under Luna's bum. The car was very hot and Luna was trying to think cool thoughts, but it wasn't working at all. She was so tired after her début as the defender of justice she just let her head rest against the seat and hoped this kind of car had an air conditioning. She could have walked just fine or done chores, her body wasn't affected. She just couldn't draw even a little breeze from her wellspring.

"To… the…Luxor? I think?" The woman with red scarf didn't sound terribly sure of herself. Luna decided to not touch her yet.

"That sounds about right. Can I come with you? What did you say your name was?" Luna asked. The woman hadn't said it, but it would have been impolite to make an issue out of it.

"Qamar Zuabi." Ms. Zuabi was clutching the key against her chest like it was her lifeline. Luna had a feeling she was unnerving the woman, but she wasn't entirely sure how to calm her down. Usually if you specifically had to say the other person had no reason to be afraid you also implied there might be a reason to think so and that's why you specifically had to deny it.

"Maybe we should go now; the effects of my Luna-Luna Higher Moral Standards Beam aren't permanent," she proposed instead. Now she proved she wasn't brainwashing anyone, which was calming, right?

Zuabi put the key in and started the car. Luna noted she should keep her eyes on the road.

* * *

Lillian Spelt wasn't in any way a conspicuous young woman. She had graduated from high school with average grades, but not gotten into any of the universities she had applied for. She was pretty enough in the girl next door kind of way, but again nothing special. She had only gotten a job in the Black Mansion because she was the niece of the head house maid. When she had been given the position her Aunt Anne had invited Lillian to the mansion, taken her to her room and given her a serious talk about the kind of things that she might witness and would have to be discreet about – unless she was willing to risk her life.

Lillian had been baffled and a bit outraged, but above all she had been stupefied. She hadn't really managed to convince herself it could be true, not here in England where people were civilized. She had needed the job.

"The way you speak of this place makes it sound like some mafia mansion," she had quipped, looking around in the high room. The furnishing in her aunt's room had been bland, but the architecture had been grand even on the servants' side.

"The comparison isn't entirely incorrect," Aunt Anne had answered with harsh eyes, like chips of stone. She had only wanted to make sure Lillian knew what she got herself into. Now she regretted her flippancy in the face of the issue.

She glared at the washer machine in the cellar as she loaded it with blue and hot pink microfiber towels used for cleaning tables and sinks. She was the new girl so she was bounced from one job to another, to "learn everything" and basically do what no-one else wanted to do or was too busy to do. She had a feeling she was going to deal with the young master a lot; she wasn't the only one who was ashamed.

"What should I do?" she asked the washing machine. It didn't answer so Lillian started it, thinking that she had surely reached a new low to start talking with inanimate objects.

Harry Dursley was just a little kid. She should do something, but the police really were on Dame Black's side. It was insane, but true. Lillian Spelt had never felt so ashamed before, but she wasn't going to do anything.

The towels were in and she left the washing room, walked across the bare corridor to the laundry room. They washed their own cleaning equipments and in a pinch they could do laundry as well, but that had been externalized to Coverall London Inc. and so the "washer girl's" responsibility was merely to send off and receive the laundry and check it was indeed clean and well ironed. The room was mostly empty now, but it still smelled of clean laundry and Lillian took three deep breaths, enjoying it for a second before taking the trolley out of its closet, a small thing where the laundry boxes would be loaded to the front and she would drive it from standing on the skids behind it. This was why she was the one to come face-to-face with the fat boy in the garden; she had gone to see to the laundry firm's car to the back gate and caught the boy as she had driven the motorized trolley towards the mansion. She took the boxes, she made a mandatory comment about weather (surprisingly beautiful today!) She closed the gate.

Only, a fraction of a second before it closed a fat little boy jumped through it, falling on his knees in front of her. Lillian's first thought was that she was some kind of hooligan; some months back a gang had had fun trying to get into the garden.

Then the boy lifted his red, angry face and shouted: "Where is my brother?" She hadn't even thought Harry might have a brother. Lillian felt like throwing up. Her second thought was disbelief that this plump, rude boy was the brother of the cute, polite one. Though, she had to admit, the situation warranted some rudeness and Harry had been the unbelievably calm and mature one.

"I'm sorry…"she tried, but that wasn't cutting it and they both knew it.

In the end she hid Dudley Dursley into the helicopter hanger. She would sneak him out later, but if she didn't return in time with the sheets someone would be sent to look for her and the boy absolutely refused to leave the place. Lillian was taller, but she wasn't terribly strong and the boy was big for his age – she didn't think she could bodily throw him out. Also, the boy refused to be quiet before she fearfully consented to help him and if a guard heard him they would both be in trouble.

This was bound to be a catastrophe and as she drove the laundry trolley towards the mansion Lillian glumly thought that she probably deserved it for being such a coward.

* * *

AN: No Harry in this one, but the next chapter will focus on him again.

Poor Dursleys. NOW they are going to have an apoplexy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter III: Our Choices**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.  
J. K. Rowling

* * *

Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise. This seemed to be Walburga Black's second motto, not something one could see written in Latin under her coat of arms, but the household certainly lived by it. Harry felt it was much too early when a discreet knock to his door had awakened him an unfamiliar maid carried a breakfast tray inside. This one, he noted, avoided his eyes as stubbornly as Lillian Spelt had done.

Now Harry was supposed to be packing, or technically speaking spending time allotted for packing. In truth, he started to pack his new things, but a gaggle of efficient servants had taken that over for him. Currently he was loitering in the hallway outside the room that had been given for him to use – he absolutely refused to think of it as his room – and wondering when he could get back inside without getting in the way. It wasn't that he had been ordered out, oh no, Black servants would never be so crass as to give orders to their masters. But anywhere Harry had tried to sit or stand he had felt he was in the way of a person fetching something essential and he didn't feel easy surrounded by so many servants anyway. It made him feel like a Malfoy. So he loitered and wondered if he was off the hook where the Homework of Evil was concerned since Black hadn't tried to make him discuss it yet. He was leaning his back against the wall, bored, when the maid from yesterday, Lillian Spelt, hasted to him.

She didn't quite run, but she walked _very _quickly and her face was red when she paused for a breath. She looked around in a way that screamed "suspicious!" so loud and clear it was painful and Harry wanted to cringe. He had enough experience sneaking around where he wasn't supposed to be that he knew that wasn't the way to do it.

"Young master, your brother has gotten inside. He's hiding in the hangar and I can't get him to leave," she whispered, looking Harry with pleading eyes. Her eyes were very pretty, now that he got a good look at them.

A jolt traveled through Harry. Dudley had come for him? He couldn't imagine how Dudley had gotten inside or what he thought he could do, but that didn't matter now. Dudley had come for him and Harry's mouth stretched into a wide grin.

"I'll come, it's not like anyone expects me to hang around here anyway," he whispered back and gave the young woman a stern look. She really needed pointers for the future if she was going to keep sneaking around in a place like this. She was helping Dudley and she was _nice _and Harry didn't want her to get hurt. "You go first, walk and try to look like you are going to do something terribly important. Name-drop me if you have to. I will walk to the hanger a little after you so it won't look like we are in cahoots and don't look around like that, it just screams that you are up to no good."

Lillian nodded. She looked hesitant, but lifted her chin and when she turned to walk away it was at much more sedate pace. Harry watched her back retreat the long hallway and disappear behind a corner. He also found out that it was really, really hard to follow his own advice. The soles of his feet were itching and his back tingled so badly he almost turned to look if someone was watching him and he was completely sure the butler would appear somewhere and drag him to Black and then where would they be? The mansion had felt absurdly big before, but now it was like a giant's castle where he could walk and walk and never get anywhere. Harry had to remind himself that Hogwarts was much bigger and it didn't take that long time to get from class on one side of it to the second class on the other side, up in a tower.

The walk took less than that, but it was more than enough from Harry's mood to switch from elated to scared and annoyed. Didn't Dudley know how dangerous this was, how stupid and how pointless it was to sneak in here when he couldn't take Harry home even if they managed to escape? Of course he probably didn't, but… When he pushed the glass doors open and stepped into the garden again he had to grit his teeth and count to ten slowly to keep from dashing into run.

Lillian had almost gotten to the hanger when Harry got it in his sight. He walked casually and agonizingly slow, his hands in his pockets. He let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding in a big whoosh when he reached the shadow of the building. Lillian leaned against the wall in a manner that would have seemed innocuous had it been someplace else and entered a code into a keypad next to wide doors. The doors slid inside the walls almost without a sound. Now Harry jumped inside and collided with another body that jumped towards the light. His cousin dragged him inside. It really was Dudley, with a backpack on his back, but it looked empty strangely enough.

"Dudley!" Harry didn't raise his voice much, but the intensity carried through. He didn't have time to say anything else before his brother, his "worried for his image, no fluffy crap for me" brother hugged him tight enough to squeeze all breath from his lungs.

"Harry, are you all right? You total idiot, Harry, you just got home and now you got kidnapped again! Can you believe the police say we can't have you back? I came to take you home," Dudley blabbed and squeezed him still a little tighter before releasing him, pushing him at arm's length and giving him a good look. It took Harry two tries to grasp enough air to answer.

"I'm happy to see you too, Duds, but you can't be here, it's too dangerous." Thankfully Lillian hid them from the outside world, closed the hanger doors with an echoing clang and darkness fell on them. It wasn't complete darkness; there were narrow windows near the ceiling where little light got through, casting yellow rectangles on the floor, but Harry's eyes were used to the bright morning and he couldn't see Dudley's face at all.

"I'm gonna take you home now, Harry!" Dudley snarled and shook him for a good measure. Slowly his face was appearing from the shadows and it was desperate.

"The police would just take me back here, they are on her side," Harry said, but he couldn't force himself to push Dudley away. He looked over his shoulder at Lillian who seemed to be wringing her hands and fairly hopping up and down with impatience. "Leave now, please, Ms Lillian. I'll take care of Dudley. If they find us I'll deny I ever spoke with you," he promised. He was a bit disappointed how she left without a word of protest, just walked outside like nothing. Not that he really needed another person being stubborn, but still. Flash of light and with another clang they were in darkness again.

"Look, Dudley, Black's going to take me to Kemet, but I'll be rescued there. It's a really long story and I'm really, really sorry I lied before, but when that Gundam pilot took me before? I was kind of willing. I'm gonna get away and this time I'll call, I swear, just let me take you outside before they come looking for me." A part of him that wasn't small at all was afraid Dudley would hate him for the lying and revert back to the old bully Dudley, but he just looked gobsmacked.

"You weren't kidnapped before? Why did you go with the Gundam? Is that why that bitch Black took you?" Then, with younger, longing voice: "Was it cool inside? The Gundam, I mean?"

"No, I had to save my godfather who is Black's son, that's why I'm here now, the godson part, not the Gundam. Yes, it was cool, but _please_, Dudley!" He was getting desperate.

"I'm not gonna leave you! You always hid in the cupboard with me when I was mad at mum and dad," Dudley said and it made absolutely no sense.

Dudley was a spoiled child, but how spoiled he was today, when at least the school staff didn't cater to his every whim, was nothing compared to how spoiled he used to be. Two hand's fingers hadn't been enough to count his birthday and Christmas gifts when they were little kids – though to be completely honest that had been true for Harry as well. Newest games, movies, action figures and more junk food and sweets than was good for anyone he got regardless whether it was a birthday or Christmas or not. But every once in a blue moon mum Petunia and dad Vernon would refuse something completely ludicrous like the pony Dudley had wanted when he was twelve, or would tell him not to do something that was usually dangerous. The he would shout and cry crocodile tears and stomp his feet and eventually hide in the cupboard to sulk. Harry had been embarrassed by his tantrums, but he had made Dudley cheese and ham sandwiches and hid in the closet with him to (be punished, no, not this-him, so hard to keep straight…) show solidarity. Even before solidarity became part of his vocabulary.

It hadn't been a punishment, not here. He had just wanted to stick by Dudley.

Oh!

"Dudley, this is a LOT more serious than being mad at mum and dad," he said sternly. Dudley surprised him by simply nodding.

"I know. That's why I'm not gonna leave you, no matter what. We are brothers, we need to stick together." Harry had never seen Dudley look like this before. He was still the big as a whale Dudley who the school nurse just couldn't make to adhere by a diet, still the bully Dudley who just happened to leave his friends in peace, he hadn't turned into some mirror universe perfect fairy tale Dudley, but his round, red face was serious and serene. Harry hadn't ever thought Dudley could look serene.

"Dudley, these people aren't playing around. They could hurt… kill you," Harry forced himself to say. It was a disquieting thought.

"I know. I read from them from this magazine, it was Kampala something, they were talking of this secret conspiracy that rules the world in secret. I thought it was a load of bullshit, but it said the Blacks were in on it. It's true, isn't it? I'm not going."

That did it. Harry didn't fall in love with a girl from this world, he didn't almost sacrifice himself for Quatre or Duo and realize they were so good friends he could never leave them behind or anything dramatic like that. In the dark hanger that kind of reminded him of the cupboard, even though it was so spacious, smelled like oil and metal rather than dust and mothballs and had a real helicopter instead of a toy, his brother said they needed to stick together. He had thought it would be hard as hell to make the choice. And it was, or at least it wasn't easy, but…

Harry would stay. He couldn't not stay.

"Yes, we need to stick together." He thought his voice sounded really creepy. He grabbed Dudley's wrist and Ron's widely grinning face swam through his vision, followed by Hermione's sterner face framed by bushy hair. _Ron, Hermione, I'm really sorry_.

And then they were inside the helicopter. It was only then that Harry realized they wouldn't fly by it, surely, all the way to Kemet so no use to hide Dudley there. His brain felt like it didn't belong to him at all, like someone else was thinking for him and not doing very good job of it. _Hagrid laughing in a way a mountain might laugh if it could, beautiful, snow white Hedwig, Neville, the twins, Dumbledore with his strange clothes and twinkling eyes_.

"We can run away together," Harry promised and then they were standing on a thankfully empty street, outside that damned wall. Dudley was standing ramrod straight and his grip was so strong Harry's fingers turned white.

"What was that?" Dudley's voice was a shriek. _His Sirius, Potter's Sirius and the Shrieking Shack, Honeydukes where he had gone only once and even then hid under the table, and Hogwarts, his first real home_.

"I'll tell you later, now we need to get away. I'll tell you everything later, I promise. Oh shit, now we need to get to Kemet!" That was where the cavalry would be now. Oh shit.

They were running down the street. Harry had no clue what there even was in that direction, but it didn't matter much. It was as good as the opposite direction. They had a few days' window to get to Kemet without even their passports. Sun was shining into Harry's eyes and Dudley's questions filled his skull until it was buzzing like a beehive. He was now stuck there, for good or ill. He thought of his mum and dad, Quatre and Duo, Ibie and Luna. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

* * *

Heero Yuy was sitting in front of his laptop, hacking into Japan's Air traffic control's database and filing in a flight plan. Avoiding radar entirely by flying under it was wildly impractical over such long distance even if he traveled most of the way over ocean, which would lengthen his travel greatly. Breaking orbit would have allowed him to fly over it, but avoiding the scope of enemy satellites would have been hard and impractical. There was a chance of his hack being discovered by someone in Japan's end, but it was small enough.

Heero frowned as he completed his job. It was in his advantage, but he felt professional disdain at the thought of so important and so poorly protected network. He shut down the laptop, pushed the chair back took a backpack from the table once used for drying tea leaves. It contained a small survival radio, a locator beacon, canned food and a can opener, water, a first aid kit, fishing kit, signaling flares, a compass and enough emergency oxygen for two. He normally didn't carry this much survival equipment with him, but this time he would be transporting a civilian.

For whatever the boy was worth to Doctor J.

He left the old oxidation room and entered the main hall where Wing was stored. With it's alighting gear joints bent as much as they could and midsection fold bent at almost 120 degree angle the close to invulnerable war machine resembled a man who had just been punched to solar plexus. Heero was aware he should be above such whimsical impressions, but he didn't like seeing Wing look so vulnerable. He shook the thought from his mind, opened the doors wide open and climbed in, harnessing himself. It was a bit of a challenge to steer the Gundam out of the factory hall in the hunched down position. Its head brushed the ceiling a few times and if Heero wasn't careful it might go through it. If Wing did go through the ceiling, freeing it might accidentally tear down the entire roof.

Once out Heero closed the doors and took to air, rising to flight level 200's transition altitude as quickly as possible. The city's air traffic control computers wouldn't notice anything strange –computers did what they had been programmed to do, nothing more and nothing less, and Heero had just ensured they wouldn't raise a flag. But if a living, rational person manually motnitored his flight they would realize they hadn't carried out this flight planning.

He relaxed once he reached the altitude and Wing's computer automatically switched from the use of altitude to the use of the flight level. He liked the clean, straightforward act of flying through sky that, if not empty, at least offered him enough space to free him from all distractions. A simple flight plan to follow, clear, blue sky over him and clouds under him, the mechanical act of operating his Gundam under optimal circumstances was like meditation.

Odin Lowe had attempted to teach him meditating, but that had been a long time ago and he had been young and impatient. He had sat on the thin rug of various cheap motel rooms that blended together in his memory, trying to not think if he could soon quit and how long they would be staying this time. Those half-learned skills Heero had forgotten, this being the closest to that clear state of mind he could...

_Hello there, space cowboy. A little birdie told me you are off to meet the wizard_, Duo Maxwell's voice sounded from the radio, breaking Heero's calm like a hammer smashing glass.

"Don't you have something you should be doing now? You even needed to call for 04's assistance with the conflict in your territory." If he was that busy he should have been too busy to bother his comrades oceans away.

_Nah, it'll be a whole day before I go out again. I was gonna come meet you face to face, but then the shit hit the cooling system so I decided to call you instead._ Duo's voice was blithely unrepentant.

"Was there something you wanted to ask me or was this a social call?" Heero asked. The mere concept of using inter-Gundam system for social call was ludicrous to him.

_What's two plus three?_ Duo asked without missing a beat. Heero opened his mouth and closed it again and against his better judgment he answered, thinking that maybe this time humoring Duo would get the Deathscythe pilot to leave him alone.

"Five," he said. Obviously.

_Wrong! The answer is cheese!_ Duo cheerfully declared and Heero paused in the face of the bizarreness of the claim.

"That…makes no sense," he pointed out with flat voice.

_I bet you Harry can make cheese out of mathematics. Say hi to the kid for me and tell that G takes him up on the offer_, Duo babbled and a metallic screech from the background tore Heero's ears.

"Please don't tell me you believe in magic," Heero muttered and wondered what offer the other was referring to. Duo voice practically dripped smirk.

_Only the kind that turns teacups into hedgehogs, _he said as though that absolved him somehow. Heero gave this all the consideration the comment deserved.

"01 out," he said and cut the connection.

To tell the truth pilot 02 unnerved him. Heero hadn't ever been a people person and his social skills left a lot to be desired, but usually he could at least tell what motivated the people he dealt with. Any combination of greed, revenge, bloodlust, political ideology, religious zeal, the need to belong, and the need to prove something; most people weren't all that complicated. Duo Maxwell to all appearances fought Oz because he found it fun, but there had to be some underlying reason. Surely. That unknown made the L2 pilot an unpredictable variable and Heero didn't like those. Briefly he remembered another person, a girl in St Gabriel school uniform. Personality-wise Relena Darlian couldn't be more different from 02, but she was an uncontrollable variable as well, a civilian who could connect his face to his code name, who knew he was obligated to kill her the next time they met… Who hadn't reported him to the authorities despite this.

Duo Maxwell could be disquieting, but Relena Darlian was even more so. Her blithely unafraid attitude in the face of his gun always gave him the impression she knew something about him _he _didn't know and he didn't like it one bit. But he had no time for further sentimentality.

Under him the ocean changed into the coast of China; he didn't see any of it through the heavy cover of clouds, but his monitors alerted him to the fact. He didn't expect to be questioned, even during these days of war; the first of freedom the International Air Transport Agreement was the right to fly over a foreign country without landing and he had filed a technically valid flight plan.

He hadn't had the right to make it, but the plan itself was in no way faulty, including correct flight level, alternate airports, estimate fuel need, flight plan timing and even holding over Luxor airport that he had no intention doing. His route type was direct with checkpoints under him and the first was in Beijing. The checkpoints were limited by time to fly between them, which was why he wasn't flying at speed anywhere near his Gundam's limits. His supposed aircraft was Trinisette Dove after all. All these considerations in his mind Duo, Relena and the boy reputedly able to make cheese out of mathematics left his mind.

* * *

The meeting with her fiancé-to-probably-be was quickly approaching, but Dorothy Catalonia wasn't the kind of girl who would let a boy dominate all her thoughts. She had her own fish to fry, a fish she knew she couldn't tell her grandfather of. She was sitting on her bed with her laptop on her knees. Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde, known simply as Francisco Franco, a Spanish dictator, head of state of Spain and _de facto_ regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death was looking at her from the screen. The word of the day calendar hanging above the head of her bed read "Tergiversation".

Ambiguity, cover-up, deception, delusion. She hadn't paid the calendar much attention that morning.

It wasn't even that far-away history, just a few decades before the Sweet Water War. Though Franco adopted some trappings of fascism, he wasn't considered a fascist exactly. But he had been a dictator and non-government trade unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum were either suppressed or tightly controlled by all means, including violent police repression. Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, Larger cities, and capitals, were mostly under the heavily-armed Policía Armada. Then Franco died and the truly unbelievable happened.

The first democratic government after Franco's death passed the law of amnesty, which exempted of responsibility to everyone who committed any offense for political reasons prior to this date, those accused to attack the dictatorship and those who had committed crimes in the head of state's name in merry equality. In the long run it didn't truly satisfy anyone, but it was something they could live with. Killing stopped, peace remained and freedom was gained step by step. Dorothy was thinking.

Don Juan Carlos de Borbón had been the one to begin the process. He had facilitated the ambitious democratic project. Their Franco they already had, not a man, but a multi-headed monster that hid in the shadows. But Don Juan Carlos? His time hadn't come yet. Dorothy raised her hands to his face and looked at them against the light. They were beautiful, delicate-looking hands, not soft for fencing had given her calluses, but long-fingered, very white and carefully manicured. No impractically long nails, no horridly gaudy nail polish, but a French manicure with its clean, well-groomed appearance, neither flashy nor fussy.

"Things need to get worse before they can get better," she said out loud. She lowered her hands to her lap and they pressed into fists. Hers were hands without a single drop of blood on them – yet.

Her musings were interrupted when her phone rang. Walkürenritt, the Ride of Valkyries, filled the room, a bit plastic, flat and factitious having been rendered into a ring tone, but even then it lifted her fighting spirits. Dorothy reached to her desk, fumbling a bit with her fingers before she got a hold of her hone. She flipped it open and pressed it against her ear.

"You will NEVER believe what I HEARD!" a high voice rose to falsetto, making Dorothy wince and distance the phone from her ear.

"Anilina," she acknowledged the caller; no need to ask who she was, not after the hollering. The girl wasn't a Foundation brat, but she was filthy rich and she was dating one. Dorothy expected she would be reeled in before long.

"I was in that new nail salon, you know, and there was this woman who came in, she had the most fa-bu-lous shoes! Carrie Klaine, you know, gold and green with the little mirror pieces and really high heels. Anyway, Mirrim is sitting there right beside me and when she hears the woman's name she makes this joke about how they have to be related cuz they have the same surname and it's like really rare!" Anilina rambled on and Dorothy made appropriate noises as she shut down the computer and steadied it against her hip. She rose, put it on her desk and walked to the ivory white secretary. Originally intended for writing, Dorothy kept the elegant piece of furniture as purely decoration. There were some half-forgotten knick-knacks in the drawers, but that was it _as far as anyone was concerned_.

"Mm, that's very interesting," she encouraged Mirrim half-heartedly. She took a key from her pocket and opened a drawer, one without lock on the outside. It was a real antique secretary and true to the Elizabethan era inside one of the drawers was a secret compartment. The lock made an old, screeching noise, but opened obediently enough.

"The woman asks for Mirrim's brother's name, you know, the one that went for her father in the divorce, then if her mother's maiden name was Auburn and if her father was, you know, Charlemagne, dear God, what were her grandparents thinking?" Making more noises deep in her throat Dorothy took a folder from the secret compartment, small but enough to hide a few pieces of paper. That was what it had been made for after all.

"Guess what, that woman was her new stepmother! And Mirrim has been estranged from her father for ages cuz, you know, he left her mother, but now that stepmother said that her mother cheated on her father with her stepfather first and she promised to take her meet her father cuz they have so much to speak. Wasn't that, like, totally?" Anilina was beaming at the other end of the call, waiting for Dorothy's approval, a pat to the head for being a good puppy and relaying the gossip to her, fair currency in their circles.

"Totally totally. But look, I have to stop now, let's call again tomorrow, bye." Dorothy ended the call. There were times when she wondered if her peers shared enough brain cells between them to make one functional brain. There were times when she was sure they didn't. Her brain cells, however? Now that was the question, wasn't it? She had claimed "feminine problems", a sure-fire way to see that her grandfather signed the waiver and avoided the issue entirely, and gotten her brain scanned seven ways to Sunday. MEG, DOT, EROS– that last name still made her lips twitch to a small smile – and SPECT together claimed her gray matter was more than sufficient.

Dorothy loved her grandfather despite everything, she had come to realize that. Despite his distant fathering, despite this engagement he had sprung upon her, despite the mobile doll factories and the war that raged around the globe. Had she been of weaker disposition she might have felt like crying, but she was The Magnificent Bitch and she felt no inclination for waterworks. On her desk was a picture of beautiful ash blond woman in silver-white dress, a gold-haired, laughing man with his arms around her and a baby in the woman's arms. Dorothy took the picture in hand, gazed at it for a few seconds and put it down again, with more determined line to her mouth.

War was part of humanity, bone deep, soul deep, war that had stolen his father's life and driven her mother to drink. Driven her to drink one time too many just before taking the wheel of her sweet, convertible corvette. War was like bloody, formal dance that never ended, going on generation after generation throughout the history of humankind. Nations and soldiers danced in rows, stepped in, drew blood, stepped out to give way to other and waited their turn to step back in. The servants came to sweep the bodies away and the dancers would clash again. Now it was Dorothy's turn to step and twirl.

In her hand, the brain scans that proved her ideal for the new neuro-transmitter interface system. A dance to end all dance. The world at her feet.

* * *

Harry leaned his back against a tree and scuffed the ground with his feet, avoiding Dudley's eyes. After running until Dudley couldn't anymore and taking several random turns they had found a park, almost empty so early in the morning. Past the bluest playground area Harry had ever seen – with light blue swing set, darker blue slide, turquoise jungle gym and misty blue sandbox – where some early birds were already playing they found a small depression hidden from spying eyes. Only a man in sweatshirt who was walking his dog ran by and an old lady with gray hair, and a gray coat fed pigeons a little ways from them. There was no one to overhear them.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Dudley asked with hurt voice. Hurt and angry. Harry was getting unwelcome flashes of the Other Dudley and shook his head firmly from side to side.

"Even I didn't know until the day before I was kidnapped. Remember the way I fainted? Not that I was really kidnapped, though, but in Uganda anyway. And once I got back I was kidnapped immediately for real." Harry was kind of worried by how good he was getting at lying. Though he hadn't said anything that was untrue, exactly, he just hadn't told the whole truth. A lie by omission.

The omission being that he hadn't had any intention of letting Dudley know preferably ever, period. What if he had relapsed into Harry-hating Dudley? And he still might; Aunt Petunia had hated his mum a lot back in Potter-universe and they were sibling as well. Harry was picking blades of grass of the ground one by one, tearing them in half absentmindedly and throwing away. There was brown and green caked under his fingernails.

"Look at me, Harry!" Dudley commanded and grabbed Harry's face, lifting it up and turning it to him. Harry's breath hitched and his eyes widened. Dudley was still red and his sweaty hair had been plastered flat against his skull. He didn't look too angry, though his small eyes had been narrowed so they almost disappeared into the crinkles of his face. "Stop being stupid, you are still my brother. But I want to know these things, okay? So your godfather was in prison in Uganda and you freed him with a Gundam pilot and you have magic and a magical girlfriend – Ibie's gonna be pissed by the way…"

"Luna's not my girlfriend!" Harry protested, but Dudley paid the protest no more head than the protests about Ibie.

"And you have magic!" Dudley's arms made wide circles like fans. "That's not fair! Why can't I meet Gundam pilots or have magic? Wait, can I have magic?" And Dudley's eyes narrowed even more until they were tiny slits and his hands fisted the hem of Harry's shirt.

Harry wasn't Luna, but he didn't have to be a Seer to know that this was the moment that would break them or make them. So maybe Dudley wouldn't immediately hate his guts, but in the long run? When they had been seven years old, Dursley-him and Dudley, they had gotten Power Trooper action figures for Christmas from Aunt Marge. Aunt Marge, being an adult and therefore unable to appreciate the ins and outs of toy show merchandise, bought Dudley the standard Black Trooper and Harry the leveled-up Silver Knight Trooper. Dudley demanded they switch, Harry had refused; he wasn't stupid. He looked forward, but he wasn't really looking at Dudley now. He was looking years into the past, seeing the silvery plastic melt in the fireplace until his Knight Trooper had resembled more space mutant with drooping helmet and long, gnarly hand like some troll.

If Dudley didn't get to have something, then no one else was allowed to either. A lesson learned in both universes. This was a crossroads and he had to be careful to pick the right road now or things would go to south just when they had started to go well.

"I don't know but…I think I should be able to figure out a way to let you use magic!" he fairly shouted in a fit of inspiration, Luna's computer analogy still in mind. "I mean, a database can be accessed from multiple workstations, right? I can share. And you are going to meet a Gundam pilot in Kemet since one is going to come to save me. If we ever get that far, I mean." He could share. Magic, Gundam pilots, even Walburga Black if Dudley was stupid enough to take him up on that offer. Harry was holding his breath.

And Dudley's face relaxed into a happy grin. Harry's heart soared.

"That's great! We're gonna be the best wizards ever!" he crowed and pumped his plump fist up.

"Even if the competition isn't exactly fierce," Harry added. The dampness from the grass was beginning to seep into his trousers and he stood up. Dudley followed his example.

"Who cares? Now we just need to get to Kemet. Can't you magic us into the cargo hold of plane?" Dudley asked. Harry shook his head sadly.

"Those holds aren't pressurized or heated. Maybe I could do something about that, but I don't want to find out a thousand feet up I can't," he said. Now that the first euphoria had passed he was beginning to question how clever taking Dudley with him really was. It would be a lot more difficult to sneak the both of them to Kemet than just go by his lonesome, Dudley wasn't what you could call physically fit, mum and dad were going to have a fit of epic proportions once they found out they had both gone missing and the whole thing was just plain dangerous. Besides, if he returned to Walburga Black and said he had just gone walking or something she would take him to Kemet, no difficulties. (If only he still had his invisibility cloak!)

But Dudley was in the know and if Harry jilted him now he would never forgive it. Harry couldn't bear that.

"You will come up with something. Brothers together!" Dudley shouted and raised his fist. Harry raised his own and they bumped fists.

"Brothers together," he agreed. Come hell or high water, parental fit or the Romefeller Foundation. Family needed to stick together.

They started walking again, an unvoiced decision. Harry didn't feel comfortable staying in one place too long while Dudley was too full of excitement and renewed energy to stay in one place for long. The sun was warm and the city's noise was beginning to roar in their ears in that way that was so common to them they had only ever noticed when it had toned down. Dudley was true-to-Merlin skipping on the sand path. They soon found themselves at the shore of the small reservoir, but to Harry's disappointment discovered it dry while under repair. He could imagine, though, what it must be like full of water and thought it must be very beautiful. Harry was kicking bigger pebbles, trying to wrack his brain for a plan, but he couldn't focus on it for long. He was thinking of the stories interrupted, the life's story of Harry Potter and his friends and enemies.

What had become of Peter Pettigrew? He hadn't hidden all those years as a rat, right? But he had still been a Death Eater, surely. Would Harry have dated Hermione one day, or was Neville going to do that now? Would he have become friends with Luna back home? Was Snape nicer – he couldn't imagine the greasy git managing outright nice – to Neville than he had been to Harry since he hadn't hated Neville's dad, as far as Harry knew? What were his not-brother and not-sister like? It hurt to let go, to never find out.

What would his life have been like here if he hadn't, uh, combined with himself? These were haunting thoughts.

Harry pointedly wasn't thinking about the biggest lie of omission yet, the one that still hovered over his head like the Sword of Damocles. The truth Quatre was so interested in, the truth that might still rob him of his brother. _He wasn't all Dudley's brother, just half._

* * *

AN: Long time no see! Sorry about that ^_^;;

Dudley's character development begins here. It's going to be a long, hard road, but he will get there in the end.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter IV: Trouble in every solution**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

Harry Potter could be called something of an expert in slipping into places he wasn't supposed to be and now Harry's brain was working overtime as he tried to come up with a way to get to Kemet. It was obvious they couldn't leave the country legally so illegal it would have to be. A plane had the advantage of being quick and taking them right to Luxor, but the cold, unpressurized cargo hold was a definitive minus side. A boat of some kind would be safer, but also slower. Besides, not only would they need to escape detection longer, they would still have to find their way to where ever Duke Dermail's villa was once they were in Kemet. Apparation would have been nice had it been a feasible option, but the distance would have been much too great even if he had known a place to apparate into.

"If there ever was a day I regretted living in an island country," he muttered.

They were walking around the park and now that the initial excitement of adventures to come had passed even Dudley had to admit the trouble people much older than they were had failed to tackle; crossing borders illegally wasn't exactly easy.

"Can't you just call your friends and say that you are in London?" Dudley asked and kicked some dust up as they walked. They had come to crossroads and Harry didn't want to walk too near the fence of the park where anyone could spot him so he turned to the path that led back towards the empty fountain.

"No, I had a prepaid subscription in the phone and it expired. I don't remember the number," he answered. It would be so much easier if he could just let Black catch him, he was sure that the only thing he had to do was to return to Privet Drive and he would be caught before he could ring the doorbell. But that still left Dudley, what could possibly possess Black to take him… Harry's tread came to a halt like he had walked into a wall.

"Harry, did you see something… No, you got an idea!" Dudley half shouted, half tried to lower his voice, jumping up and down so his many chins were wiggling. Harry winced and wished he had just carried on and not stood there like an idiot.

"Dudley, it's a bad idea. Scratch that, it's a terrible idea," he moaned. It was, and the worst part of it was that it was the one with the best chances of success so far.

"Shoot. Even a bad idea is better than no idea," Dudley insisted. But his eyes were straying to a small cart a man with silly mustache and a red beret was driving a little way away, one with an awning with red and white stripes and the picture of a widely grinning anthropomorphic chestnut painted to the side. The man was getting ready to roast the first chestnuts of the day.

"I'm a little hungry, aren't you?" Harry futilely tried to drag Dudley towards the enticing cart, but for once his brother wasn't budging.

"Nice try, Harry, but no dice. What kind of idea did you get?" He was standing with his legs wide, hands on his hips like some parody of a woman. Harry had to admit that it had been a pitiful attempt at distraction, if only to himself.

"It's, uh, I just thought…" He couldn't even come up with a convincing lie. Dudley sighed and shook his head sadly.

"You are a piss-poor liar, Harrykins," he said, making Harry's eye twitch. They both hated their mum's sugary-sweet, humiliating nicknames. "And because you are stupidly noble it's gotta be something dangerous to me cause you wouldn't care if you were in danger," Dudley concluded and Harry was honestly startled. When had Dudley come to know him so well?

"Well, I have proved myself belligerent and I really don't think Walburga Black is above taking hostages," he whispered and kicked a pebble belligerently, not meeting his brother's gaze.

"Hey, that's not a bad idea…" Dudley bit his thumb nail and Harry knew with agonizing certainty he was thinking of a way to get himself taken as a hostage. Silly, plump Dudley who thought this was like spy novels and good guys didn't get hurt, ever. And something hot and bubbly churned in Harry's chest.

"Of course it isn't a bad idea!" he shouted and forced himself to lower his voice to a whisper; it almost hurt, the way his throat constricted to keep his anger inside. "It's an apocalyptically bad idea, a calamitous idea, a cataclysmal idea, and as much as I really love my new vocabulary I don't have enough words to say how terrible it is."

"What you mean, new vocabulary?" Dudley asked and Harry flushed, cursing his loose tongue.

"Never mind that, the point is that these people will threaten to kill you if I don't do what they want me to do, how that is supposed to be _not bad?_" he hissed. It would be different if it was Quatre or Duo since he could trust them to get themselves out of any bad situation, but then, if it was one of the Gundam pilots with him now they wouldn't have this problem it the first place.

Dudley didn't answer him right away. A woman in golden-brown fur coat pushed golden-brown baby carriage and walked a golden-brown, tiny poodle, walking leisurely towards them. Dudley started to talk excessively loudly about the newest episode of Dea Invicta and how the Azrael Gundam's nanomachine zombies had failed because of the power of love, somehow. If only the power of love worked in real life, Harry thought, then things would be so much easier. The woman sniffed, curled her heavily painted lips and looked down at them both, no doubt wondering what they were doing there when they should have been at school. Harry was momentarily struck by an irrational fear that she was Dame Black's accomplice, but really, he couldn't go doubting every rich-looking person in the city.

"That's easy, you just teach me magic first so I can apparate too and after that I'm in danger and we can get caught," Dudley said once the woman had passed them and they had put some distance between them. Harry blinked stupidly, wondering if Dudley had any clue just what he was asking.

"And I have just how long to figure out how to do that? This didn't come with a manual, you know?" he forced between his gritting teeth. Dudley appeared blissfully unconcerned.

"Eh, we have a whole day, don't we? You are the clever one, I'm sure you will figure something out. Now, I'm hungry so why don't we go back to that cart?" Without waiting for an answer Dudley turned around, leaving Harry to stare after him, torn between throttling his brother and throwing himself into the empty fountain.

* * *

Treize Kushrenada didn't enjoy his dealings with Dame Walburga Black. A big part of this was their ideological differences, which he had to hide since he was pretending to be the Romefeller Foundation's faithful was well aware he couldn't claim moral high ground, but at least his ends were good enough that they were worth the means he was forced to resort to, even if "justified" might be too strong a word, while all Dame Black cared about was her precious Blood, money and power. She had her agenda that contradicted his. But he was just now discovering there were personality traits other than uppity social Darwinism that displeased him; she was a smug, secretive snake and stubborn enough to out-stubborn a mule. She would never listen to what other people had to say. She would hear, but that was merely a biological function. She couldn't be argued with because she didn't care enough to partake in an argument.

He had once read that often people with similar personality traits would strive to be different, but at the same time they would know they couldn't be more similar and this would leave to intense dislike of the traits they shared in the other person. He liked to ignore this.

The rapidly degenerating situation in South Africa had forced him to relocate to there. He chose neutral Lesotho as his base of operations, a fact Lesotho most definitely wasn't happy about, but wasn't in a position to refuse. He was sitting in his luxurious hotel suite, his back to the window. He wouldn't have bared his back like this had the suite been located lower, but the fifteenth floor –consequently the second highest in the entire city, the highest building being a long way in another direction – meant that a sniper would have very hard time getting into a position to shoot him. Grand though his surroundings were, he would have rather communicated with this person face-to-face. It would have made it harder for her to dismiss him.

"Young Harry is quite busy enough, being introduced to the new way of life better befitting his new station. I can not spare him," Dame Black's face answered to his request from the screen of Treize's computer. Her face was smooth like that of a woman over three decades her junior, but also tight in a way, almost thick-looking like a permanently sour winter-pale mask. Her face wasn't easy to read, but she was holding her shoulders high in a way that spoke of tension. A woman named Black, dressed in black in a room where seemed to be more shadows than light; her presentation was at least honest. All that was inside her was more black and cobwebs of the past after all, dusty and hidden in shadows.

"He was kidnapped by the pilot of Gundam Sandrock; the most dangerous pilot in my opinion, considering his suspiciously flexible and vast support network. He might be in possession of valuable information that the local branch of Oz neglected to properly debrief him for," he argued his point, again, pointedly not mentioning that this was due to Dame Black's intervention.

Not mentioning there were other questions he wanted to ask than those concerning pilot 04. Dame Black's sudden decision to adopt the boy was very suspicious in the light of his use of the teleportation technology. Why send a boy to do a man's job, unless the boy was somehow the only one who could? There was something here that Treize knew he was overlooking, the vital piece that would make sense of the puzzle. Any information Harry Dursley could give regarding 04 would be bonus, of course, but hardly his main motivator. He was almost certain of the pilot's identity in any case.

"I think you should work harder to subjugate these colonialist insurrectionists rather than bother a young man of perfectly respectable line, my good colonel. Why, how hard can it be to bring down five combatants? I dread to think how long it will take you to bring Uganda back into the fold if this is the precedent," Dame Black sniffed. Her shoulder moved in a way that indicated she gestured with her hand, but whatever the gesture, it was outside the picture. Had Black been any less prim and proper he would have suspected it was a crude one.

"With all due respect," Treize begun with the words that guaranteed what followed wouldn't be respectful in truth in the least. His temper was beginning to hammer against his temples and he had to resist the temptation to massage the bridge of his nose. "I wish to converse with young Mr. Black precisely in order to catch the rebels. And the situation in Uganda can't be laid at Oz's feet." In regards to Mathilda Sisulu, the Romefeller Foundation had played into Treize's hands beautifully.

"I trust you are capable of handling this situation. It would be a shame if all the funding you have received over the years was for nothing," Dame Black ended the conversation abruptly, not even giving Treize the time to acknowledge the dismissal before signing out. He leaned his head against his palm, sighing. That she hadn't had a good answer was cold comfort. He had known for quite some time that rationality wasn't easy to come by when one was dealing with the Romefeller Foundation. He was in dire need of more intel and in addition he was rather worried about how Commander Une would handle the situation in her end of things.

Treize pressed a button and a small hatch in the wall opened with a smooth whirr, the belt inside giving him an ice-cold bottle of tonic water. The taste was refreshing on his tongue, fresh and just bitter enough. He wasn't enthusiastic about the necessity of remaining in Africa; Treize could trust Commander Une's intentions, but not always her execution. True enough, his plan at this stage was to aggravate the situation further, to fan the flames of the war into a forest fire so terrible it would force people to think about their baser nature twice in the future rather than just succumb to it at the first chance, but experience had taught him that a situation not fully in control was bound to spin out of control in the worst way possible.

* * *

Ironically it was Dudley's babble of evil Gundam nanomachine zombies that gave Harry the idea about sharing his magic. He was effectively trying to infect Dudley with his own magic, right? And using magic was all about calling upon it, letting it know _what_ he wanted to happen and willing it. He thought of Mathilda Sisulu and felt his magic stir. It was a curious sensation, like there was a pool of water inside him, somehow, and in the water there was something that moved… which sounded a lot creepier than it actually was when he put it like that. But the point was, calling his magic at least wasn't a problem anymore. It was the "letting it know" part and the will that was trouble always when he tried something new.

There were birches. Harry had always thought that birch was the most beautiful tree there was, for all he supposed his now gone wand should have made him partial to holly. The birch he and Dudley had ducked under didn't have much in the way of leaves yet, only the barest hint of green mist, but the branches reached the ground and they were thick enough Harry was pretty sure no-one was going to bother them. The ground was wet and dirty and the wind was chilly, but this wasn't a problem. The problem was that Harry's great idea wasn't working.

At first he had thought to bite Dudley to the neck, like a vampire – his lore had apparently been a bit confused. But he had hovered over the neck and Dudley's breath had been heavy and quick and it had just felt wrong somehow, though Harry would have been hard pressed to say what way exactly. Then he had taken Dudley's hand and bit it several times, to no avail. He had a feeling he should draw blood, but he just couldn't bring himself to bite that hard. He tried and tried to force himself, but his jaws weren't obeying.

"This is disgusting," he protested and lifted Dudley's hand to his mouth again. It was a thick hand, big-boned and surrounded by a lot of flesh, and he had to open his mouth wide like in a dentist's chair to get his teeth around it. He bit as hard as he could, but then he felt Dudley's thumb bone shift under his teeth and he had to spat the hand from his mouth again in a hurry even though he didn't mean to. Dudley looked more annoyed than hurt, though.

"You aren't doing this right," Dudley admonished him and Harry frowned, harsh words on the tip of his tongue. Was it his fault there was no one to teach him these things? Was it his fault that biting his brother was really distracting and frankly creepy way of doing this?

"Look, I have an idea. Put my hand between your teeth and close your eyes," Dudley ordered him. Harry took a deep breath and let it out is a whizzing sigh, doing as ordered since he figured the situation couldn't possibly get any more awkward. His sense of taste seemed stronger when all he saw was darkness. Dudley's hand tasted like salt and dirty and something Harry could only guess was "human" –it wasn't a taste he liked. He didn't know where to put his tongue.

"Now, imagine I'm standing in front of you and there is a big, burly goon standing behind me and he's holding a knife to my throat," Dudley begun with a low, slow voice, the kind of voice they used when they used to tell each other ghost stories in the dark. "He's telling you to do something really bad, kill that Luna bird you told me you liked _sooo _much, or else he's slitting my throat and you can't make that kind of choice."

Harry could picture it all too easily in his mind. Dudley would look frightened and he would give Harry this desperate look because Harry was the one with magic so he could get Dudley to safety. It didn't seem to matter that he knew he could take both Dudley and Luna with him if they were all there and disappear, he saw Dudley's red face ashen-pale and the goon that looked remarkably like taller and burlier Gregory Goyle was grinning sadistically. His mouth was dry when he tried to swallow around Dudley's hand. It was stupid to be that scared, he told himself, but it didn't really help. That stupid tale could come true all too easily.

"Now he's scratching me with the knife a little and a single drop of blood runs down my throat," Dudley continued gleefully, his tone lilting, mocking. Harry was breathing harder and his heartbeat was loud in his ears. He could see it too, a ruby-red drop on pale, clammy skin. "I make a sound and my throat moves and the knife cuts me some more. And unless you do something RIGHT NOW he's gonna slash and my blood is gonna spray like from a hose, like in those movies, and I'm gonna drop to the ground and twitch and there will be red everywhere…"

Harry bit down, whatever would have happened next he didn't find out because he bit down hard enough Dudley shouted and he tasted blood in his mouth. Between one heartbeat and another a red-hot spike of pain struck through his chest.

Harry fell against Dudley. His eyes were open, but all he could see was gray mist and red spots and sawtooth lines dancing across his vision. He felt like someone had tried to wrench his lungs out of his chest, the pain spilling over everywhere so even his toenails ached. Then, like an echo, there was a red explosion outside him that he still somehow felt. For a terrible second Harry felt like a disjointed, eight-limbed monster before he realized it wasn't him that was hurting now, but Dudley. The hurt _bounced _back to him, terrible and blood-red, and bounced back to Dudley again. His ears were full of rushing noise, like a storm or a sea, and even his hair was hurting when he moved his head. Harry didn't know what was up and what was down, he felt like his innards were stretched between him and Dudley, stretched longer and longer and longer until there was no end for it.

And then it was over like the pain never was there. Harry was lying in the brownish grass, staring dumbly into some tubular thing he slowly realized was Dudley's arm, and even more slowly that his brother's hand was still in his mouth. He spat it out and winced, but the pain didn't return. Carefully, inch by inch, Harry sat up. The teeth marks in Dudley's hand were deep and oozing blood to the ground. His face had lost all colour, even his lips were white and his eyes had turned to the back of his head, showing only milky white. Dudley had lost consciousness.

Harry didn't know what to do. His medical knowledge amounted to distinguishing between "dead" and "not dead" and bandaging obvious wounds –with band-aids – and he wondered if he could wake Dudley up by giving him a good thwack.

_If I'm ever in need of medical aid_, his inner Hermione snarked, _please do me no favours_.

I'll never do you a favour again, you saw to that, Harry thought and poked Dudley hesitantly. He had read from somewhere that unconscious people should be turned to their sides so they would breathe easier. He didn't remember where that had been, but at least it couldn't do any harm so he rolled Dudley to his side and…

the world swam in his eyes, or swung like a swing or dipped like a boat from the top of a wave to the bottom…

and when Harry blinked his eyes he found he was lying down in the dirt with his mouth full of brownish grass and pebbles. He spat them from his mouth, wishing for something to drink. This was promising to be a bad, bad day and what scared him was that it had barely begun.

What _had_ that been about?

It felt like an eternity before Dudley returned to consciousness and Harry feared they would be found by some well-meaning adult, though as far as his clock was concerned only about eight minutes actually passed before Dudley groaned and twitched. Harry didn't waste time shaking his brother's shoulder even though it made the nausea return.

"Wake up, I'm almost sure it worked," Harry said. It better have worked after that episode. And he still could feel like he was outside of himself, though it wasn't anywhere near as bad anymore.

"That was magic?" Only Dudley mumbled the sounds so it sounded more like _t'w'sm'ck_, but Harry got the idea. Dudley kept his eyes so tightly screwed shut his forehead had giant wrinkles like those of an elephant.

"Yes. But usually it doesn't hurt, really." Harry wondered why Dudley just stared up, looking so nauseous. It had been bad, worse than anything he had suffered before, but at least when it was over it was over, a clean cut. No suffering the whole night because his bones were growing back, no magical migraine and fainting because he overused his magic. If he had to pick between repeating this and the bone-growing episode it would have been this.

He was shaken from his musings by a small, wet sound. He felt dizzy again and when he could focus his eyes he saw that Dudley had turned his head away, that his shoulders were shaking just a little bit. And then he realized that Dudley had never in his life been seriously hurt before. Other than a scraped knee, Dudley had never before suffered much anything and now he was insisting on playing hostage for Harry. Harry turned his face and stared at the birch like it was terribly interesting, pretending he didn't know his cousin was crying.

"What a he- what a way to start," he whispered and petted Dudley's head. His hair was slick with cold sweat.

"Start what?" Dudley mumbled, this time more verbose. But he still wasn't lifting his head off the ground.

"What a way to get hurt the first time," he elucidated, grimacing. Dudley shuddered and Harry just was sure that his brother didn't want to know what the second time would be like. But in for a penny, in for a pound; he wasn't sure if he was surprised or not that Dudley didn't fold there and then, but he didn't. Instead he rose to his feet, or at least tried to.

Dudley pushed himself up, Harry lurched and tried to move his leg, but then he was on his back again, his head hurting. He had a bad, bad feeling the leg he had tried to move wasn't his own. It was such a mundane place, a muggle place where muggle snobs with fur coats walked their teacup poodles (not to be confused with teacup hedgehogs, those were cool) and muggle children played, but it was like he had changed it, somehow. There were the trees, the low-hanging branches like a bare, torn veils and the white-black trunk of the birch they hid under, the musty-wet smell of moss and rain, all normal things. And yet, somewhere maybe in the back of his spine, somewhere where people felt things they couldn't explain, he felt it wasn't normal anymore. It was different, very different. He saw two tree trunks from the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, so sharply his neck hurt, there was only one. Dudley's head turned in time with him, like they were two soldiers in a parade. Part of his magic was in Dudley now, but something else of his was too, he thought. His vision and balance, for one.

"Let's try at the same time," he proposed. Dudley's lips moved and it looked pretty stupid. Harry winced; he had known it was a stupid thing to do, just like that and without any research, but he hadn't really thought it would be this bad. Dudley rose to his knees and Harry folded his before he was aware he had done it. He took a step and Dudley walked into the tree trunk. They stood up together, eventually, like drunkards, leaning on one another as the world swung around them. Harry almost cried when he realized they would have to learn to walk like this, not-separate. His eyes were tingling with frustration and his vision was dim and wet.

"Do you know what is scary?" he asked; he felt hungry, cold, and that he really ought to relieve himself. Again he spat something from his mouth and he wasn't sure how many times he had done that already. "It isn't even midday yet."

* * *

Heero landed Wing carefully at a small oasis. It wasn't an ideal placement for the Gundam, far from ideal, but he couldn't land too close to a city and this place seemed abandoned enough to him; there were five houses, but those lacked doors and windows and the once white walls had dimmed into the yellow-brown of the sand. An abandoned road, covered in dirt so the pavement barely showed from under it, went through the oasis, under a few sad-looking palm trees and some yellowish grass, disappearing to the desert again. There was an old green hand pump and nothing much else, but if the well still had enough water to draw from, the place would have to do.

Hot, dry, air hit Heero in the face when he opened Wing's latch and climbed out. The pump made dreadful noises when he forced it up and down again, rust grinding against rust, but after a while it made a wet sound and then a splash of water hit the sand at Heero's feet. He put his hand under the spray and gathered water to the palm of his hand, smelling it. It smelled good enough, or at least not very wrong, so he retrieved a can from the Wing and filled it. Then he started a fire and boiled his drinking water for the day. He had already become sick from bad water once on Earth and was determined not to get sick again. Once the water was boiled he filled his big canteens, put on simple, plain pants and shirt that could be found in any place on Earth and took his compass and map.

On his way back he could drive, but he needed to hike to Luxor, and the Sahara was an unforgiving, strange environment to him. He tied a scarf around his head to protect himself from heat stroke, used a generous amount of sun lotion to prevent burns and started walking.

He had never before hiked through desert, just as he had never done many things one could only do on Earth, but he was in excellent physical condition and he knew how to act, at least in theory. _Drink water if you have it. Do not ration it if you have enough_. Heero made sure to keep properly hydrated as he marched towards Luxor. Water tasted better in the heat than it had ever before and Heero soon had to relieve himself. He made sure to check his urine's colour to make sure his body hadn't lost too much water. The sand shifted under his feet, making simply walking much harder work than it would have been on more solid terrain. He was sweating and angry at himself for wasting so much water and energy and for caring how uncomfortable he was, but at least the oasis, while out of sight distance, still wasn't that far from Luxor. Noon was already hours past, but Heero kept a ten minutes break once the first hour had passed and he could watch the city through binoculars.

Luxor glittered in the setting sun. It was difficult to get a good visual; modern steel and glass glittered alongside old chalked buildings, burned white under the sun, and the blue river Nile that reflected the golden light. But Heero knew it was this side of the city that Duke Dermail's estate was. He kept an eye on his wrist watch and continued his trek once the ten minutes relief had passed.

The sun was setting in a brilliant display of red and orange when Heero reached the outskirts of the villa and climbed a hill to study it in secret. Duke Demail's vacation home was a large, three-story building with a small helicopter landing area, surrounded by a garden and a high wall. The front section of the garden had a rectangular pond parallel to the river with water plants in it and the rear section had a rectangular pond bordered on one side by date palms and on the other by some other trees he didn't recognize. Compared to the austere, brown surroundings the rich green and blue garden looked like it could have inspired the common concept of paradise, but Heero banished such superfluous thoughts from his mind. The rear garden offered a fair amount of cover to sneak to the villa once one got past the wall, but the guard Heero spied walking leisurely through the garden had a dog on a leash.

He lay in waiting as the evening turned to night and almost pleasantly cool turned into cold, counting hours and minutes and seconds, learning the schedule of the guards. Eventually, after he was certain he could handle the situation, he rose to his feet and stretched his muscles.

There was a hangar behind the villa for heavy traffic. It was surrounded by wall as well, guarded by cameras and alarms and men, but Heero had noted the security was much laxer there, most likely because nothing of great monetary value was stocked there and any important people were in the main house. He found it easy enough to climb over the wall and slip past the guards, using blind spots to approach the little air traffic control room. The door was, naturally, locked.

For once Heero found himself wishing for 02's presence. For all his unprofessional conduct he was the expert in breaking and entering without leaving signs of his passing. He quickly screwed the outer shell of the card reader, his fingers steady in the dark, and installed his key chip. This had a 45 to 60 percent chance of working, depending on how advanced system Duke Dermail was using in his hangar, and if this didn't work he would have to resort to something more obvious. Heero screwed the shell back on and swiped his own card through the reader. The wait felt long even though Heero knew it couldn't even be a whole second, but eventually the light turned green. He wasted no time in pushing the door open and slipping inside.

There were computers everywhere in the hangar; processor cabinets lined the walls and hummed so loudly they rattled their metal casing and hid the slight metallic screech of the opening door. Smaller laptops covered every spare inch of table surface that wasn't filled with dirty coffee cups. There was only one person in the room. The room was dim and he was hunched over a laptop in the pale, blue light of the room, half-hidden in the corner with his back to Heero, a phone link hanging from the palmtop hooked to his hand.

"Ohh, mmm, Lalala-Lailah," the man hummed under his breath, kicking the table leg rhythmically. "Ooh my little pretty lady, ohh, mmm." It would be so easy to sneak behind him and kill him, distracted as he was… but that would reveal his presence, make Dermail suspicious and the rescue mission that much harder. And focused on his work though the man was, Heero knew he couldn't hack into the system with the man there.

There was a garrote in his hip bag – and something else. He took a disposable gas mask, a simple, clear thing that covered his mouth and nose, and sealed it against his skin. After that he took an ampule and pressed the release button.

The pressured air released Kolokol-1 into the air of the small room. The room was small for such a big dosage, but the air was alive with the swish of ventilators circulating the air outside, necessary to cool the many units. The man fell over his computer in what would be two to six hours of unconsciousness. Who would be surprised if a man fell asleep in the middle of the night? Heero wasted no time in pushing the man away and beginning his search for scheduled traffic, but something else caught his attention. A large, backlit board hung from the ceiling on the left side of the room. Heero read a few names mentioned on it: factories and shipping companies, mining corporations and satellites. This information didn't immediately concern his mission, but he was certain it would come of use in the long run.

* * *

Privet Drive number 4 was a thoroughly ordinary house on a thoroughly ordinary street in a thoroughly ordinary neighbourhood. It was one cookie-cutter house among rows and rows of similar houses, the lawn was almost painfully neat and the car in front of the house was very ordinary indeed, a good car with good gas mileage for a good, well-off executive family. It was strange, Neo Camander thought, that such thoroughly uninspiring place could have created a boy as enigmatic as Harry Dursley. At first glance the boy wasn't anything special, just a boy who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But something didn't quite add up.

"What interesting people I meet in your service, my Dame," he told the small bobble-head doll on his car's dashboard. It was the cutest little dark-haired mananaggal, a Philippinesian evil, man-eating witch and Neo had felt completely justified in naming it after his employer.

The doll didn't answer, only nodded and nodded when he flicked it with his finger.

Harry's story had been logical and consistent, but it was maybe a little _too _neat. The boy had given the police a detailed account of his misadventure, but for all the fright it must have been, he hadn't seemed frightened. Upset, yes, angry, yes, and very much on the edge, but not frightened. He hadn't been frightened of Neo either, or Dame Black, not even really ill of ease. Such courage was a rare thing in one so young. And then there was the inconsistence in Harry's story of his time as the Gundam pilot's prisoner and his behavior as Dame Black's "guest" to consider. Harry had been compliant with the pilot if his story was to be believed. It had been sensible of course, the best way for a civilian to survive being taken as a hostage was to co-operate and not provoke their captor while waiting for a rescue.

With Dame Black Harry had done anything but. It could be that the Gundam pilot with a large guerilla force had just been scarier than an old lady could be, even a powerful and ruthless one, but again, Harry hadn't seemed genuinely scared of him. Neo had kept his observations to himself, but he was intrigued.

He was waiting in his car, watching the house. He had seen the husband return from work. He frowned as a police car drove to the driveway and two men walked to the door, soon opened by a distraught-looking, wild-haired suburban house wife. A quick check revealed that she had reported her biological son having gone missing as well. He opened the window of the car and could hear a man's voice shouting, muted, but still clear enough to make out a word here and there. He watched as the police drove away, he waited as the sun sank lower and the day darkened towards the night, but there was no sign of either boy. Neo stretched on his seat as he thought what that must mean. Harry had taken his brother with him, but why hamper his escape attempt with extra weight?

He drank green coffee from a thermos to keep the hunger away. It was smooth, fresh and didn't really need any sugar. He didn't really buy to the high levels of naturally occurring polyphenol antioxidants protecting his cells from damage, but it wasn't bad flavour-wise. The silhouette of a big man and a rail-thin woman appeared through the white curtains, walking around the living room, but nothing of importance happened for a long while. Eventually he shrugged and started the engine, concluding that the boy had to be too clever to think his parents' house would offer him safety.

That was when two boys appeared in crossroads. Neo suppressed a twinge of disappointment and killed the engine quickly. The boy was foolish enough to return after all. But as the pair walked slowly their way towards him a new mystery was revealed to him. Well, maybe mystery was a big word for it, but a strange quirk nonetheless.

It was something in the way they moved that bothered Neo, even though he wasn't sure why. It took him a minute to realize what it was: they walked exactly the same pace. They slowed down, the sped their tread, but always matched step by step. The fat boy turned his head sharply to the left and the thin, dark-haired one turned his as well. Harry lifted his hand to push a wild lock away from his face and Dudley moved his hand in tandem even though there was no reason. What _strange _behavior that was, even when the boys' tread sped up, it was very slow. It took them what felt like forever to reach his car, red and shiny, efficient and affordable, a car that wouldn't stand out in an environment like this.

When he opened the door Dudley Dursley jumped with start. But this was where the eerie imitation broke, for while Harry's body did a twitch the turn of his head was sharp and his face alert, closed-off like a window with blinds closed inside.

"Now, let's be sensible, young Black. Don't run to your old house; it was a feeble protection to you before and will not shelter you now. And it would be a shame if something happened to your brother, now wouldn't it?" Neo drawled. It was as subtle as a mobile suit in a reconnaissance mission, but he wasn't interested in subtle now; he wanted to provoke a reaction.

A reaction he got. The boy's face contorted and he pleaded: "Please don't hurt Dudley! I will come quietly, just don't do anything to him." And again something was off.

Sun was at the boy's back now, lighting his outline and leaving his face in the shadows, forcing Neo to squint his eyes. But while Dudley Dursley looked obviously nervous, biting his lip and twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands, Harry was… not quite nervous enough. His voice was breathy, quick, panicked trying to not sound panicked, and his eyes were wide, his mouth a thin, nervous line. The boy lied with his words, lied with his voice and he lied with his face, but he failed to lie with his body. The bright, orange-red sun was bright at Harry's back and Neo had to squint his eyes, but even that couldn't hide the way the boy's back straightened rather than hunched, how his hands weren't doing anything nervous. Harry moved his leg, shifted his weight and widened his stance, and while Dudley's leg twitched he didn't follow the movement through.

How thoroughly fascinating.

* * *

AN: I'm sorry for the long hiatus; Hetalia anonymous kink meme grabbed my muse by the throat and refused to let her go for the longest time. Many thanks to Mystic 777 for betaing this. ^_^

Green coffee really exists. It is at least partially made of unroasted beans and supposedly very healthy.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter V: All the pieces on the board**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

It was afternoon in Kemet and Harry had to wonder how he got himself into these situations. The sun was beating the airstrip mercilessly as Harry stepped down the stairs behind Walburga Black, under the watchful eyes of two bodyguards. He had arrived to the land of the pyramids, the cradle of civilization. Travel the world, see the sights, meet interesting people… get kidnapped by them. Behind him Dudley stumbled on the stairs, his legs not obeying quite right now that Harry was walking on even ground. He would have waited until Dudley was down as well, but the guards didn't let him stop.

He regretted the sharing more and more as hours went by. It was creepy, rising up and sitting down without realizing it because someone else did so in another room, but that wasn't the worst part of it. They could both sit still after all, but even then Harry would be aware of Dudley like his brother really was an extension of him now. It was like there was a Dudley-radar in his head and he was always aware where his brother was, like he now had an extra person-shaped arm that skittered away doing its own things, but still never truly sundered from him…

It was bad, very bad. Harry couldn't even imagine how he would go about teaching Dudley to use magic, because the mere thought of him reaching inside Harry to use his magic made him want to throw up.

It had been a close thing Dudley had been taken with them to Kemet at all. Though disgustingly eager to use a hostage against Harry, at first Black had thought to leave Dudley in London, out of the sight of Duke Dermail who didn't really need to know how reluctant Harry was – never mind that Harry had no clue why it was so important to this duke that Harry visited his villa at all. Wouldn't that have been nice, for the sharing to be in vain after all the pain and trouble? In the end she had decided to take Dudley to Luxor with them, but send him to some property the Blacks owned there, easily reachable and close enough to Harry to keep him on his toes, maybe. Harry wasn't sure and he wasn't complaining.

"You will take the boy to the establishment," Walburga Black ordered Neo Camander and the other man who walked behind Dudley's back. She had been foolish when she let Harry keep the cellphone, but after the escape-that-wasn't she had wisened and made very sure to never say out loud what kind of property she owned in Luxor in Harry's hearing. "Please behave yourself, boy, no unseemly scenes," she addressed Dudley with a cold voice and Harry had a kind of flashback, remembering Aunt Petunia calling him "the boy" with very similar tone. Black was dressed in heavy, black dress and her temples glistened with small beads of sweat. Harry was cooler, at least, in his light, white and light brown clothes and he felt a prickle of petty glee: melt into a puddle, harpy!

They were swiftly separated, Dudley taken to a car and Harry marched towards a great house surrounded by walls before they could even exchange a good-bye. But even as the car drove off like all Hell's devils were after it, Harry could _feel_ Dudley. He had to take carefully measured breaths and step carefully to keep the slight fuzziness at the edge of his vision from developing into a full-blown faint. His poor brain insisted he was sitting and walking at the same time and it wasn't taking this well at all. Harry could feel Dudley and he told himself it was a good thing.

Last night he rolled in his sleep when Dudley rolled. Unfortunately, he was closer to the edge and rolled right off.

He barely saw anything on his way to the garden around the villa, on his way to the door. He hoped he didn't seem like he was about to keel over at any moment though that was precisely how he felt. The next thing he really saw and registered were the eyebrows. They were the most dominating, strangest eyebrows he had ever seen, long and forked like a snake's tongue, just dark and just thick enough to be blindingly obvious. Under those eyebrows were blue eyes, framed by blond hair. She looked pretty, but also icy enough to freeze… something that lived in a very cold place. Icy enough to freeze a polar bear. Why were his words abandoning him like this? Or maybe it was the metaphors that were leaving the sinking ship.

"…Harry Black," Walburga Black said and Harry realized just in time they had been introduced. But what was her name?

"Please call me Dorothy," she answered his unvoiced question and extended her hand. Harry reached towards it in order to shake hands, but then he remembered something.

She was a duke's granddaughter so she was nobility, though Harry couldn't say what sort of nobility she might be, the bad royalist that he was. So he did the classiest thing he could think of and bowed over her hand to kiss it. When he lifted his face he noticed she had a startled look on her face, her mouth hanging the tiniest bit open.

"Wasn't this right?" he asked, cursing his inability to think straight. But the old man he assumed was Duke Dermail looked happy beside her and Harry didn't dare to turn his head to look at Black because the last thing he wanted was a visual confirmation that he had made her happy. It was only when he thought of this that he realized his vision had cleared.

"Ah, yes, I am charmed to meet you. May I call you Harry?" Dorothy asked. Harry nodded, still surprised it didn't make him feel dizzy, or any dizzier at least. Maybe this situation had a distance factor of some kind.

"It's nice to meet you, Dorothy," he said, shifting weight from one leg to another. He was a bad royalist and his knowledge of proper manners was thoroughly exhausted now.

He and Black were ushered inside the villa. It was a nice, airy place, light-coloured and nothing like Black's gloomy mansion had been. There were huge bronze vases filled with some sort of long-stemmed, red flowers. On one side of the hall was a fake but good looking ancient mural where a bird-headed god was walking hand in hand with a woman in white dress and golden crown. Some white-dressed people who were probably priests were kneeling in front of them and offering them all kinds of plates filled with gold and precious-looking vases. The windows of the hall were large and the light spilled everywhere. Yet for all this beauty the door shutting silently made Harry's ears echo like prison gates had been slammed shut. He felt for Dudley, he really did.

* * *

Green, Luna Lovegood decided as she traveled to Luxor with her new friend, was like air. Green was everywhere, it was taken for granted, always there yet not really seen. Until all of a sudden it wasn't. Like air, green was only paid attention to when there was no green.

Kemet wasn't a very green place at all. It was brown and yellow and ochre, red and golden under sunset when they had searched for a motel to stay the night before and white in the little town where the buildings were still all chalked white. There was little green here and there, but Kemet wasn't a place for misty green that crept upon the ground and rose to the sun. Here green was a ribbon of trees and reeds twined with the blue that was the river Nile that stretched across the land and tiny, fresh drops here and there among harsher colours. Luna had decided she didn't much care for Kemet. It was breathtaking and majestic in its beauty, but she liked gentler places and sun with a kinder temper.

"So, Luna, why exactly are you traveling with me?" Qamar asked her. They were driving in her van and the car was hot even with the air conditioning, but Luna felt satisfaction every kilometer they came closer to their destination.

"I'm trying to run from certain people," she answered. She felt a little bad about leaving those nice people without a proper good bye and worrying them so, but she had to find Harry. "And then there is a boy," she said to be completely honest.

"You're...running away from the soldiers?" It didn't sound much like a question.

"Yes, them too, I guess." She had thought she was in the clear already, but it never hurt to be too careful. She would have to work extra hard to make sure they didn't connect her alter ego with her.

"But I thought that was _my_ job." Qamar sounded kind of strange, but she was trying to stay in good humor. Luna really liked her good humor and her laughter, even though it was so often startled.

"I can be your coworker, then! That is so nice! Please treat me kindly and teach me all the ropes," she asked and lowered her eyes, glancing from under her eyelashes in a way she hoped was sweet. Edgar moved around a little on her lap and Luna patted the sleepy hedgehog's nose.

"But don't you have parents?" Qamar asked. When Luna looked at her she saw Qamar was chewing on her lower lip and her eyes darted between Luna and the road. Luna found her eyes really very pretty and nice. Many people had cold eyes or disdainful eyes and most had indifferent eyes, tightly wrapped up like balls of yarn, eyes that didn't care for others. But Qamar's eyes were worried and friendly like very dark chocolate, both a little bitter and that much sweeter because of it. And they were chocolate-coloured as well.

"Yes, I have both parents." It still made Luna all warm and fuzzy inside to be able to say that. "And a grandmother too. But they are in space."

"…is that so? Ah, Luna-Noor, if you have no one to take care of you, you could come live with me. Would you like that? You wouldn't have to leave Earth at all then." Qamar's voice was bubbling angry, threatening to spill over, and even then it was completely flat. She was mad for Luna's sake; it was strangely wonderful even though it was completely unexpected.

"But why shouldn't I go to space once this is over? The cultural significance of the colonies is extremely important to the Earth Sphere, namely those countries that once played a major role in building them! Rather than fall to the trap of imperialism UESA should acknowledge the bond of equals that is supported by years of historical trade, both in…" An un-ladylike snort interrupted Luna's sermon.

"So, Luna-Noor." Qamar paused, continuing to worry her lip, now red as a cherry, between her teeth. Now Luna couldn't tell what she was thinking or feeling at all.

"That sounded nice, what does it mean? And yes?" Noor wasn't the nicest sounding word she ever heard, but there was warm feeling to it, many happy sound-feelings. It was sparky and light like sun on water and, and elegant, like ball gowns.

"Noor is a name, it means… both light and bright, I guess, my English isn't the best. You've been waiting all day for a chance to say that, haven't you? Since that man gave you the pamphlet when we left the motel," Qamar asked her. Yes, the man who had given her the piece of paper. He had been dark like the tent curtains of Solomon and wrinkly like a man who had never spent a day idly inside, safe from the harsh elements, but his eyes had been air-and-fire, explosive, intense. He had been so honest and Luna liked honesty almost more than anything else.

"Maybe." She wasn't being coy, at least not on purpose. It was surprising how much fun she was having with this conversation.

"So that's what you were doing in front of the mirror at the rest stop." Qamar stated and Luna nodded as she screwed open the cork of a water bottle. She took three gulps and handed the bottle over to her new friend who drank quickly and handed the bottle back to Luna. The high sun threw its light over the landscape and heated the metal they were encased in. Luna was sweating in her light clothing, but Qamar looked as comfortable as ever despite the veil and clothing that didn't bare an inch downwards the neck and upwards the wrists.

"Of course," Luna admitted happily. "You know I wouldn't talk to myself for anything but the most important of reasons. People think that is so _odd_." Now she poured water on her palm and put it in front of Edgar. His tongue tickled her as he lapped the water and her heart swelled and floated like a balloon. Luna had always loved all sorts of fantastical creature, but she'd never had a pet of her own, not even a goldfish. His father had said that until they could keep a potted plant alive for a year an animal was out of question, never mind that Luna never would have forgotten to feed an owl or a kneazle – they wouldn't have let her. Harry had been so considerate when he gave Edgar to her.

"...I'm sure. But are you even from a Colony? You said your family is there now, but that doesn't mean they always were." It was a good guess from Qamar. And truth was that Luna truly couldn't imagine herself in a colony here, looking across open sand at a distant city that glittered like a jewel in the sun. This was not a closed space and not dead either, even though she couldn't see a single bird circulating above, couldn't find an animal scampering among the rocks. Desert life was good at hiding itself.

"It wasn't fair to make that point. I could be a colonist at heart, you never know," Luna said, but she was hesitant. Despite her earlier words about the cultural significance she had a feeling she would like colony life even less than she liked Kemet. She was a lover of living things and open sky and she didn't like being too close to many people at the same time. But a colony would be safe and she wanted to be safe and close to her family.

"Aren't you the strange one." Qamar sounded fond. It was oddly easier to get along with people in this world. It didn't make much sense as she was half-stranger here, but so it was. It was a new sensation, to be liked for being what she was.

"I'm a magical girl, but you knew that already." She believed in the Power of Friendship and she had a cute mascot animal who wasn't mentoring her much, but Luna was sure Edgar would bring help if she fell down a well or save kittens from a burning building if any ever needed saving. So far he hadn't done much besides sleeping, but she was sure he was just waiting for the right moment to reveal how special he was. She had school to go to and a little piece of world to save. Qamar's job had been a good place to start. She ticked off every box.

"I meant to ask you: how did you do that to the men?" Qamar asked, making Luna blink. So she hadn't quite spelled it out and underlined twice, but she had implied a lot, hadn't she? Magical girls didn't use mecha technology after all. But she had to remember this was a new world, they did things differently here.

"It was magic, of course. Maybe Magical Galaxy Witch wouldn't have been so redundant after all. But I like Final Nargle Invoker better."

* * *

Harry had been sent to the guest room to "refresh himself" which he had already learned was rich-ese for "changing clothes for no discernible reason at all." He had also taken a quick shower. The hot Kemetian air made him uncomfortably damp at armpits, though Uganda had been worse. Dorothy was waiting outside his door when he opened it, looking icy again. Harry apologized for taking so much time, thinking she had waited for him and was pissed because of it.

"We are going to have afternoon tea in the garden together so our grandparents can discuss business in peace," she informed him without further pleasantries. "I will take my laptop and check my email if this is all right with you." There wasn't real questioning note to her words, but Harry nodded all the same.

"Sure, I bet you got stranded here without by your leave too," he said. He was sure she would rather be out with her friends doing those unexplainable teenage girl things than babysit her grandfather's business partner's (stolen make-belief, though she didn't know this part) grandson; she looked two or three years older than him. Dorothy's lips stretched into a small, brief smile before she led him through the house, making a quick foray into her room. She came back carrying a stylish black slipcase with a contrasting red lining in her hand. Then she led him to the garden behind the house, down stairs so wide they could have fit some great ballroom and to the back door that was still twice as big as the front door of Privet Drive 4.

It was very geographic with a huge rectangular pond that glittered in the sun, surrounded by even rows of palm trees so straight their line could have been drawn with a spirit level, but the shade the trees offered was very nice in the hot afternoon sun. There was a small, round table with two chairs set by the pond, surrounded by sweet-smelling lilies. On one chair there was a tiny lizard, maybe four inches long. It was dull yellow like the sand with brown stripes and long snout. The table and the other chair were in the shade, but this was in direct sunlight and the lizard was basking on it like it had no bones in its body at all. Harry smiled to it and moved to shoo it off the chair.

But Dorothy swung her case already in a swift arc. Harry didn't have enough time to make a startled sound before it struck the lizard with a sickly crunch, sending it flying to the grass. Dorothy then sat on the now free chair, opening her laptop case on the pure white table cloth.

"Dorothy, I think you killed the poor thing," he said, feeling a bit uneasy. It wasn't that a dead lizard was such a tragedy. Actually, he wasn't sure why he felt disquieted. He had killed a basilisk (and Voldemort-in-Quirrel, though he really tried hard to not think about that too much and besides, it was an accident!) and pulled the mandrake roots to help the petrified students. The roots had looked like babies, ugly, wrinkly babies, but babies all the same. Later they had thrown a party like people and Hagrid had said something about teenager mandrakes having acne. The thought of Professor Sprout cutting them up for draught had been more than a little creepy, but it had been necessary.

Maybe that was it. Killing the mandrakes had been necessary, killing the basilisk had been really, immediately necessary. The lizard had just sunbathed on the chair, minding its own business when Dorothy had whacked it with her laptop case.

"No, it's still twitching," Dorothy said and opened her laptop. And it did, with tiny, almost invisible moves of its tail; Harry sighed and turned his head. A red, angular icon flashed across the screen, dragging a cloud of red and golden sparks in its wake, and Harry turned his face politely away when the login window appeared after it, now looking at the lizard again. He wondered if he should deal the little thing mercy killing.

"_Are you alive?"_ he hissed quietly, his back to Dorothy so she wouldn't hear. The poor lizard didn't answer – but it wasn't a snake, either. "That's just a reflex. It's probably very thoroughly dead." At least he hoped so.

"How can someone be very dead? You're either dead or not. Unless you have Munchkins singing about how you are morally, ethically and so forth really very dead." Her voice was sardonic.

"Ding-dong the lizard is dead," Harry muttered, feeling very morbid. The lizard just kept twitching and he stepped on its neck, hard. Finally the harrowing movement stopped. He wondered if he should make a Dorothy joke, but Dorothy probably got more than her fair share of those.

Dorothy gave him a surprised, appreciative look. He wondered what that was about, but it was gone almost as soon as it was there, quicker than he could open his mouth. Harry waited in awkward silence as Dorothy fiddled with her computer and jumped a bit when it suddenly blared into life.

"…_our correspondent from Kampala. And in further news today, the stock market took another major hit for the third day in a row, closing with triple-digit losses. USA's Alliance representative Alfred Burne cautioned citizens not to let the temporary economic crisis… Gas prices rose for the second straight day, leaving UESA's fear of a global regression more real than ever…"_

A sharp click of the mouse ended the barrage of newscaster voices and the sound of the silent wind filled the sunny garden again. Harry leaned his chin against his hands. He felt ridiculously chilly all of a sudden.

"Does the current global situation worry you?" Dorothy asked, finally breaking the quiet between them.

"Of course," Harry asked, surprised by her inquiry. The global situation was a heap of humanitarian catastrophes piled on top of a plate of governmental failure, crowned with icing of hope-to-God-a-Gundam-won't-blow-up-my-city. What kind of idiot wouldn't be concerned? "If only the recession was our biggest worry we would be lucky."

He jumped up and started pacing, three steps and turn, three steps and turn. It took him several seconds to register the echo, the bare walls he could almost see through the green leaves, more feel than see closing around him, to realize that he was only pacing because Dudley was. He forced himself to stop and sat back in his chair. Dorothy was giving him a sharp look under those intimidating eyebrows, but luckily not the kind of look that suggested he was a maniac. Harry's legs ached with the need to _get up_ and _move them_, but he leaned back and ignored the impulse.

"That is true. Such state the previous generation left the world for us, and now they would have us sit this conflict out and let them solve it their way." Dorothy's eyes were very blue and very hard, like blue marble if such thing existed in this strange world, and she wasn't blinking. Her gaze was so intent Harry wanted to squirm. He gripped the edge of his seat instead.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," he quoted a man much wiser than he was. Dorothy's gaze moved a tiny bit to the left and she blinked; it wasn't like she was trying to eat his soul through his eyes anymore.

"That is true. Tell me, Harry, would you do something different even if it was dangerous? Even if Dame Black disapproved it?" Her voice was soft now, feather-soft, pillow-soft, even lilting.

"Black's disapproval wouldn't make me cry," Harry drawled dryly. But he was pretty sure what Dorothy was getting at and Black being a high-handed racist jerk wasn't the point at all. "But if mum Petunia disapproved it… I guess I would. I mean, if our parents raised us to be the kind of people we are, wouldn't it be kind of insulting to dig our heads into sand and not do anything? Thank you for the work you put into us, but we quit? Even if we disagree with them it's still better than nothing, I think."

"That's a nice way to think about it. I believe I will try to think about it like that from now on," Dorothy said. She just wouldn't stop looking at Harry, this third look somewhere between numbers one and two in intensity. She was a really strange girl, but a lot better company than Harry had thought she would be. He was used to having conversations like this with Ibie, but he never would have thought a rich girl like Dorothy could agree about things with him. Maybe Draco and Walburga had just given him prejudices. He made a resolution to not judge people before getting to know them in the future, a bit ashamed he had to make such resolution at all.

This conversation came to a halt when two servants, dark-skinned boys in snow white uniforms that Harry had to wonder how they kept so pristinely clean throughout the day, carrying the most complex afternoon tea he had ever seen. There was a three tier tray that was made of white porcelain and real silver, filled with snacks. It was very West meets South, egg mayonnaise sandwiches next to some sort of fava bean bread and exotic-smelling cakes on the same tray with little muffins with some herb-smelling cheese on top. The other tray looked like it was made of silver as well, though Harry had never seen a silver hot-tray before, and on it was a see-through pot of golden-tawny tea. Harry was beginning to feel like this would shape up to be a very nice day despite the bad beginning and he felt guilty because of it. He was still aware of Dudley in that scary way and he was sure Dudley wasn't enjoying himself at all.

Harry munched on a finger sandwich, looking down and promising to make this whole thing up to Dudley somehow. The lizard was still in the grass near his feet, its little legs in the air. Looking at the body was a good way to curb his improperly good mood.

"What if you're brain dead?" he asked, returning in his mind to now ended conversation.

"Why would I be brain dead?" Dorothy asked and Harry had to admit that it probably wasn't a very good conversational start.

"I mean, we were talking about the lizard and being either dead or not. Theoretically, what if someone was brain dead? Does it count as dead if the heart is still beating?" Dorothy followed Harry's gaze to the small, sad-looking lizard, silent in the green grass. She frowned and put down her tea cup with a clink.

"They're still technically alive then. Just never going to wake up again," she argued. Harry shook his head sadly and smiled. Her tone of voice was so achingly familiar that for a second he could almost imagine she was Hermione, annoyed by something silly he and Ron had said or done.

"If you want to call that living," he teased her, forgetting to feel down again, at least for the right reason.

"I do." Dorothy's voice was very firm. Her foot was tapping the table leg absently.

"For your peace of mind? Think about the poor lizard!" Harry goaded her. He took one of the cakes with brown sugar on top. He wondered if the sweet taste was date or something else.

"...maybe. Oh God, you made me feel sorry about a lizard. I have a reputation to uphold, you know," Dorothy complained. Harry grinned, but didn't look at her, pretending for a little while this was one of Hogwarts' feasts and she Hermione, exasperated and fond. They drank their tea in silence, Dorothy clicking away at her laptop, finally checking her email.

"Harry?" she broke the silence eventually. "Please tell me you don't collect Elemental Monster cards."

"Of course I don't collect them. How old you think I am, anyway? Twelve?" Harry demanded, a bit insulted. But Dorothy wasn't looking at him at all for a change, but at the chair she was sitting in.

"Hello there. Why am I in this hand basket and where it is going?" she inexplicably muttered.

* * *

The sign over the door of the café provocatively read: Love and politics are the best sweeteners of coffee. Heero was sitting inside with a cup of coffee, killing time until the night would fall. His coffee was long cold, but he didn't care; he hadn't enjoyed it much in the first place. The place was small which was the reason he had chosen it to avoid public eye as much as possible, but the stream of customers was steady and sadly he didn't really manage to stay unnoticed for long. There was always someone with widely grinning mouth and startlingly white teeth against dark skin who approached him, but gladly all took the first no for an answer, paling under their tans. Heero knew he would seem exotic to the local eye, but he didn't understand this amount of unasked-for popularity.

"Sir, please don't scare away my customers," a woman in brown and red waitress uniform asked, giving Heero a fierce glare. He considered ignoring her wholly, but he supposed this sort of situation was good for bettering his lacking blending-in skills.

"Tell me what I did wrong. If I wanted to _scare_ them, it would have become obvious by now," he told her. A muscle in the woman's left eye corner twitched at his words.

"So this isn't obvious? Please, sir, try to control yourself. I'm going to have to duct tape your mouth shut if you keep talking like that." There was a hazardously high pile of empty plates under her one arm, the other hand taped the table top irritated. The thought that she would be able to duct tape his mouth even if both her hands were free was of course ludicrous, but Heero couldn't help but notice that she at least didn't appear intimidated by him.

"Wouldn't that manner of behaviour scare even more customers away?" he asked, honestly baffled. If one had to choose between his intimidating presence and the waitress committing a violent action in front of the customers, the latter should have a higher probability of driving away said customers.

"I don't care, it would be worth it. Do you have lasers embedded in your eyes or something?" the woman asked. Now the people around them were shaking their heads and smiling, though no one still tried to approach him. No one else, that was.

"No." That manner of mechanical enhancing would be outwardly obvious. Besides, it was highly illegal. He would hardly admit to such a thing even if it was true.

"Rrr-ight. I guess you can't help it that your face is so scary. But you could give people less intense looks at least." Now that hand rested against her hip and she tilted her head to the side, smiling. Heero sipped his coffee and didn't answer. The clock on the wall counted minutes and he had to order two more coffees to keep from appearing suspicious until he judged it sufficiently dark to leave for surveillance.

"Please come again!" the waitress called after him, confounding Heero once again. She had shown nothing but displeasure at him since he walked into her café, was it a force of habit that made her utter those words? Most likely yes; Heero put her out of his mind.

The nights of Kemet were as cold as the days were hot and while the sun hadn't set yet, the wind was cool already when Heero made his way to his vantage point. He had acquired the floor plans of the building earlier that day and while they were old and the building might have changed, he was certain of his ability to break in without too much trouble. The security had been created for a vacation home for the rich, not a detention centre. He switched his binoculars to a night visor when the darkness fell, feeling vulnerable even though he had burrowed his body to the slowly cooling sand. A gust of wind kicked up dust and blew it over him, but his eyes were protected by the night visor and he ignored it, eyes on the red-yellow heat shadows walking the garden. He was such a spot as well, even brighter for Doctor J's manipulation caused his body to run warmer than was normal for humans. But if no one was looking for him, why should anyone find him?

He had witnessed Harry Dursley's arrival to Duke Dermail's private airport earlier that day. Dursley had not appeared well and Heero suspected his captivity had been somewhat onerous, but he had walked on his own two feet and without visible restraints. His captors obviously didn't believe him capable of escaping on his own. Doctor J had said Harry Dursley was capable of just that, but Doctor J had also said Dursley was a magician. Heero didn't think his superior would intentionally give faulty intel, but now he didn't know what to believe. So it was best to prepare for the worst case scenario, which would be that he had to break at least a partially incapacitated Dursley out of the villa. The perceived slowness and clumsiness might be simply that Dursley was drugged. If he had understood the situation right, a part of the proposed business dealings between the Black and the Dermail families would be the marriage of the heirs to the families – an archaic arrangement, but efficient enough way to tie the fortunes of the families together when divorce wasn't an option. Physically abusing Dursley would not have been wise in such a situation.

Today, Heero would observe the guard night time schedule. Tomorrow, he would extract Dursley. There was something that had caught his attention, something that nagged at the edges of his concentration persistently. There had been a car that had driven away from the airport secluded by walls; there had been passengers in the plane who hadn't entered the villa. Dursley was his primary objective, Heero told himself, and Dursley was where he was supposed to be. Heero had in addition gained useful information on Dermail's planned mobile doll factories. He had the situation under control.

The communicator in Heero's pocket started vibrating silently. He moved his hand to put the button to his ear and the small mic to his mouth, his eyes never leaving the garden that undulated silver under the moonlight. There were only five individuals in the whole Earth Sphere who could call him through this.

_04 calling 01. India Sierra, stop. Oscar Papa India_, 04's voice ghosted over the communicator. IS, OPI. Inquiring status. Offering pertinent information.

"01 receives. I can talk," he answered. A sigh of relief could be heard over the line.

_You are aware that I'm assisting 02 with his situation right now, aren't you? I thought I should warn you that some of this situation is going to spill over to your side of the border in two days' time_, 04 began, circling the topic in a way Heero found annoying. Kemet did not share border with Uganda. South of Kemet and north of Uganda there was the Sudan Commonwealth_. Political dissidents Matthew Sisulu and Hallow Nguen will attempt to cross the border via…_ And the connection failed. Somewhere far above them on the orbit a mobile suit fired on a satellite.

Heero had the situation under control. But the unknown was always the uncontrollable.

* * *

AN: This chapter could as well be called Totally Oblivious People. I _like_ writing oblivious people.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter VI: A Rescue Which Will Live in Infamy**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

The war against the United Earth Sphere Alliance – or rather, one of the wars that had UESA as a common denominator – ravaged the Southern Africa, but Kemet had yet to feel the fire of it. Still the place for the rich and privileged to gather and spend their time in leisure, the mainly Muslim nation had been a strange pick in the first place for the people who wined, dined, only wore a piece of jewelry once and in the case of the young and foolish also used recreational drugs. One political commentator had speculated that it was a subconscious manifestation of the nouveau riche and Old Money Elite's attitude: Screw your religious values, we party where we want! As a part of a performance an arts student group appropriately known as Faux Pas had painted: **Isaiah 22:13**, "let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die" to the wall of the Luxor International airport. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria protested that taking the quotation out of context insulted _their_ religious beliefs, but it had no more effect than the Muslims' protests did.

Hallow Nguen had written that the increasingly intense partying was an equivalent of the Romefeller elite blocking their ears with their fingers and singing: lalala, can't hear the gunfire!

Heero Yuy had learned the intervals the guards of the Dermail ville followed, only to find out that the next night would be an exception. It would be a party. When the premises of Duke Dermail's vacation home began to fill with strangely dressed people, Heero Yuy considered postponing the rescue till the next night. He didn't know how long Walburga Black intended to stay in Kemet and if she took Dursley back to England after this ball, the rescue would become that much more complicated. If he took Dursley when the premises were brimming with visitors, the disappearance would in all likelihood go undetected longer. Besides, the party seemed to be a masquerade of some sort which would simplify blending in.

He was well familiar with the psychology of uniforms – and he knew it extended to uniform clothes as well as actual military uniforms. Uniform, noun: one of the meanings was "a characteristic feature or fashion of some class or group." A uniform turned an individual from one to one out of many, subsuming their identity into the larger unit – and branded them as a member of the unit. These people were only civilians, upper-class and untrained, untried. Take one of their number and take his clothes and he could walk among with mass of them with reasonable chance of going undetected.

It hadn't ever helped him that much when he had worn a school uniform, but he hadn't been arrested wearing one either. He resolved to avoid situations where he might have to talk.

He went over the high wall and the second wall surrounding the same hangar he had already broken into once. He reached for the door, his movements striped by the lights filtering through the leaves of the trees that shielded him from the sight of the garden party. It was a foolish design to put even a remote center so near to the wall, to allow so easy an access; enough for a civilian installment, maybe, but how civilian the members of Romefeller Foundation counted was a matter of some debate. Heero took a screwdriver from his utility belt and begun to unscrew the casing over the card reader of the small building's door. His senses were hypersensitive, his ears picked up every rise and fall in the chatter, his eyes every play of golden light and shadow, but his palms didn't sweat and his fingers were sure as he installed his key chip.

The last time he had done this he had spared the life of the man inside, but the quick peek inside proved him he couldn't afford to do so now. Heero stepped in, drawing his gun, and the three guards inside turned around, hands reaching for their guns. But the door slid shut with a sharp click and Heero shot six times, his hand steady. First shot to the chest to stop an assaulter, the second to the head to make sure. The silencer of his gun was state of art and the closed door muffled what little sound was made. The inside air smelled like iron and Heero breathed through his mouth as he activated a subroutine he had installed the last time. He stepped over the pools of blood, careful of staining his shoes. There was a sense of loss – but loss off what, he couldn't say and it didn't really matter. The mission mattered. He slipped out, keeping an eye out for a person of his size to steal the clothes from.

First two women wandered close, chattering happily, then an old man wearing gold-embroidered pants and heavy golden chains over bare chest. Heero sneaked closer to the front yard under the cover of the trees. There, under a palm tree and just far enough from the rest of the guests to be feasible: a boy of approximately sixteen years old, wearing wide pants and a red and golden vest as well as a high blue and white… hat? Crown? He was drunk as well and that made it easier for Heero to ambush him, knock him unconscious, drag him to the hangar – and take his clothes. He only left the very conspicuous crown.

The bigger rectangular pond on the front of the house was surrounded by brightly colored tents and lanterns. Red and gold beside blue and green, the flickering of red and golden and purple light that told there were real candles inside those lanterns did their part to render the scene into a colorful whole where it was difficult to differentiate between individuals. Heero wandered into the mass of the people all dressed in a vaguely similar vein. He began to run a search pattern, keeping from meeting anyone's eyes and keeping an eye for Harry Dursley. After a while he started to doubt the boy had been allowed to participate in the party, but as he started to inconspicuously move towards the open doors of the building he came face to face with a girl in a strange wig approximately a year older than he was, with white dress, wide, heavy bejeweled collar and heavy make-up. They both dodged to the same way twice and after that he stood still, waiting for her to step around him.

"I don't know you," the girl stated and gave him a questioning look that suffered slightly from her obvious inebriation.

"I don't know you either," Heero said and put his arm around her neck, pulling pulling her firmly to his side. His left hand curled around the handle of his knife to surreptitiously threaten her, to lead her aside from the rest of the group, but his movement was halted as she squealed in joy and draped her own arms around his shoulders. She smelled like exotic flowers and something pleasant, but definitely artificial.

"I'm Elaine Delacroix. Where _have you been_ all my life, mon canard," she giggled. Heero wondered if being called "my duck" was supposed to be an endearment or an insult.

"I am Ichi Hitotsu." Those were the number one in Japan's two numerical systems, but he doubted she knew that.

Delacroix, Heero soon learned, was the youngest child of the shipping magnate Jacques Delacroix. Her father was never home, her friends didn't understand her at all and all the boys, the present company excluded of course, were terribly boring and immature because they only spoke of themselves and sports and school – that she only spoke of herself, fashion and school was irony that appeared to completely escape her. Heero learned all this because she wouldn't shut up, nor disentangle herself from him. He made to steer her towards the tent that offered alcoholic drinks with the intent of losing her there without causing a scene. On the way over the lawn he was called a cabbage, a kitten, barley sugar and a dropping – or possibly a small, round goat cheese, depending on the translation. He was almost sure at this point that contrary to her choice of words she didn't in fact mean to offend him.

"Are you a friend of Dorothy's?" Delacroix asked him once they reached the cover of the green and golden tent.

"Hn," Heero made a sound he hoped was affirmative, keeping an eye on a small cluster of people that had congregated around Duke Dermail and a woman he recognized as Walburga Black. The white noise of the chatter around them and the high-pitched music almost covered the conversation wholly, forcing Heero to focus all his attention to them.

"… heatstroke, poor young man. We will give him your well-wishes… in his room. Oh, I'm sure you will soon have a chance to meet…"

"I adorrre the strong, silent type, ma puce," Delacroix purred leaned her whole weight against him, but Heero bore it with ease. Her fingers started tapping their way up his arm and Heero wondered if using a pressure point and pretending she had passed out from drinking was a practical option.

* * *

Harry was sitting in a posh guest room and reading a book. He still hadn't been given Internet privileges and while he was sure he could sneak to Dorothy's computer if he asked nicely, there wasn't much sense in aggravating Black when he would get away soon enough. It was strange how a half and a full day could feel so long a time, but damn, they did. Though he wasn't sure when "soon enough" would be. He had gotten to Kemet with Dudley and the rest was somebody else's problem. This didn't sit well with him, Harry noticed as he paced around the room like a restless animal in a zoo.

It hadn't been a bad day, in a way. Their hosts had taken him and Dame Black to a private tour to the Valley of the Kings – no one was let there anymore because the tourist masses had been bad for the ruins! But the Romeferrels weren't nobodies, they were somebodies. They had been driven from one tomb to another and the walls lavishly decorated with paintings. The white walls covered with golden people of the Ramesses' tomb – Ramesses VI, Harry remembered – and the black ceiling with the golden goddess and the smaller people were especially breathtaking, not to mention Tutankhamen's tomb; _the_ tomb. He was torn between being tickled he was indeed seeing this with his own eyes, knowing Ibie would be so jealous, guilty because they weren't supposed to be allowed there at all and guilty because he was sure Dudley wasn't having good time at all.

"Damn this cognitive dissonance," Harry mumbled and kicked the leg of a chair; sitting back and waiting had never been one of his strongest suits. He wasn't entirely sure what cognitive dissonance was, to tell the truth, but he had heard Ibie use the words and it had been when she had felt two conflicting emotions.

His sulking was interrupted when two sharp raps sounded from the door and it opened before Harry had even enough time to fully turn to face the person who walked in; effectively negating the pretense of courtesy. He wasn't surprised to see Dame Black walking in, but her clothes made him rub his eyes, wondering if he was maybe tired enough – or heat stricken enough – to hallucinate.

Dame Black looked exceptionally young for her age, Harry had to give her that, but the clothes she was wearing would have been tricky for even a woman half her age to pull off. Walburga Black was wearing a faux ancient Egyptian get-up. She had a headdress with dangling teal-tipped gold bead strands and an asp detail in front, a flowing, white cotton dress that looked like a modern designer's take on the Victorian idea of Egyptian clothes and a golden collar that wasn't all that heavy or gaudy, in fact, but it somehow highlighted her wrinkled neck, the part most telling of her real age.

"Whatever happened to good taste?" he asked, prompted by morbid curiosity. Black was snobbish and pretentious woman, but she'd been all that in a dignified, British way.

"Gratifying as I find that you have a modicum of appreciation of excellence, the theme of this evening's cocktail party was not of my choosing," she stated dryly and gave Harry a joyless smile. "Your fiancé-to-be shall attend the garden party as well, but I have my doubts of your, ah, willingness to behave according to the situation. You have been presented with a costume as well, but unless you give me your word, I shall let people know that you suffer from a mild heat stroke and have been ordered a good night's rest."

It was telling, that the first bit Harry's thoughts latched onto was the picture of himself in a loincloth and he blushed beet red. Then his brain caught fully up with Black's words, made a sound like "whabutWHAT?" and then promptly broke down as it tried to make sense of Black's words. His eyes remained disbelieving and blank while his thoughts raced full throttle into a brick wall where they frantically tried to change gears. Fiancé, he knew what a fiancé was. Fiancé was woman you intended to marry one day, a ring around the finger and all. _Your fiancé-to-be shall..._

"My what now?" he managed to get out between numb lips. He would have married if he, no! He would have _noticed_ if he had gotten engaged to somebody. It wasn't like that could happen accidentally, right?

"Surely you could take this news with a modicum of maturity, please? We arrived here to discuss the possibility of your betrothal to young Dorothy Catalonia to join the Black and Dermail families in a mutually beneficial..." the Black prattled on, her pale green eyes shining like shards of ice. She was a small, frail-looking woman, yet intimidating in the almost photoshopped smoothness of her face and the hunger in those eyes. Harry remembered he had heard somewhere that the ancient Egyptian words for "mother" and "vulture" were pronounced identically.

"You hypocrite," he managed to spit out, and then the fact that she had gotten him a fiancé without even asking or bothering to give any kind of warning sank in like a ton of lead. "You utter hypocrite! So I'M supposed to be MATURE about this when YOU tell me about MARRYING ME OFF to someone like this! Just what makes you think I even want to marry Dorothy anyway? She kind of nice, all right, but no! Just. No. This is bullshit, do you hear me? Bullshit." Harry didn't even realize he'd gotten up to Black's face before she backed a few steps and for a second seemed pale, startled. Harry's mouth curled into a grin he was sure didn't look very nice. But then Black's thin, painted mouth thinned even more and her jaw took a determined set.

"Don't talk to me in that tone, young man! And don't use such plebeian expressions. Only the unimaginative and undisciplined take refuge in _swearing_." She hissed "swearing" in the same tone of disgust one would decry "arson" or "bestiality". Her voice was high and thin like a siren, but it didn't waver.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities. Bovine fecal matter," Harry ground the words out and turned on his heels, marching to the bedside table, picking up the lamp on it, raising it high and smashing it to the floor with all his strength.

The silence that followed was so loud it rang in Harry's ears like a church bell. Harry stared at the broken lamp on the carpet. It had been a beautiful thing, made of stained glass like some kind of mosaic, depicting a peacock in some kind of garden. Harry had never broken things on purpose, (the Harry part that used to be only Potter, he hadn't had what to break, for too long...) and he had always felt a kind of shared shame when Dudley had broken something of his in a fit of pique, in both worlds. That lamp hadn't even been his to break and now it lay on the off-white carpet in glittering, broken pieces, blue and green and golden. This didn't do much good to his claim of maturity, he felt and felt his cheeks darken with shame.

"If it makes you feel any better, this isn't how I planned to reveal this to you. Our dear host jumped the gun when he decided to host this party," Black stated in a way that wasn't quite apologetic. Harry could feel her green, cold eyes piercing his neck.

"No, it doesn't," he said. "And I'm sorry about the lamp. But I won't marry Dorothy, period." And he wouldn't. He knew that Black didn't believe him, but he knew he was getting away soon enough, taking Dudley with him, and then this mess would be a bad memory only. This made him feel even more childish and selfish as he peeked at the shards on the floor, though; he hadn't even been in any danger of being frog marched to the altar. What had he been thinking?

"You aren't in any state of mind to attend to the party, I see. I will send someone to clean the floor. Don't try to clean it yourself, you will only cut your fingers." Black didn't even say anything to acknowledge she'd heard his denial. Her words made Harry miss Mum Petunia terribly; always when she said something like that her voice was warm and a little scolding, like, like Molly Weasley's voice often was, actually. When Fred and George and done something stupid. Harry thought about good mothers and Walburga Black sailed out of the rooms in a billow of her fake Egyptian dress. When the door was shut with a loud knock, Harry knelt on the floor and poked one of the bigger shards with his finger. It had been part of a peacock's tail feather and Harry felt that if Luna could see him now she would be tapping her foot.

_You shouldn't leave the poor bird like that, Harry, _she whispered to him_. Being broken is entirely no fun._

What was that spell that Hermione had used to fix his glasses? It was at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't remember the invocation. Nevermind...

"Hermione," he told the shards firmly, and maybe he was finally getting the hang of this wandless business because the shards obediently flew together like in a movie that was played backwards. The peacock stood proudly under a tree and Harry realized that the small red dots in it were pomegranates.

There was a second knock on the door and this time the door politely remained closed. Harry stood up quickly and set the lamp back to the table before calling the knocker in. A man in blindingly white clothes stepped in. His skin wasn't any darker than that of any local Harry had met, but the contrast set him to look much darker, almost like the men and the stone-faced women in the Umoja camp, though Harry was certain they wouldn't have been caught dead in clothes like those. He wondered why a cleaner would wear something where even the smallest stain would stand out so.

"Young master, I was told you'd had an acci...dent?" His words turned into a question as he turned his gaze across the room, no doubt searching for the broken lamp. Harry rubbed his hair and gave him a sheepish smile.

"It was a misunderstanding, see," he explained and pointed to the whole lamp. The man looked hesitant and let his gaze sweep across the room again, like Harry might've had hid the broken pieces under the carped or behind the bed. In the end he bowed slightly and left, leaving Harry alone with his own thoughts.

Darkness fell quickly in Egypt, almost as quickly as Harry remembered it had come in Uganda. There was a steady dimming of the light like someone had dragged a blanket above the city. Harry opened the window to let the cool night wind in and he could hear as the crickets in the garden took over from the daytime chorus of birds and cicadas. Soon those sounds were replaced by music and laughter and the darkness by lights as people begun to congregate on the garden so Harry closed the window and laid back on the bed, trying to pass time somehow. He thought about Dudley who languished in a prison cell somewhere nearby and hoped he didn't have it too bad. He thought about Hermione who had banished him here and how he now had a spell in her memory. It felt kind of fitting, though he would have been hard pressed to say in what way precisely. He was brought dinner and ate in his room.

He was already searching his pajamas from the closet someone had neatly folded them when the door was pushed quietly open. Those were his clothes now, for all he hadn't paid for them or asked for them, and he was ruffling through the piles of shirts and vests when a voice sounded behind him: "Harry Dursley." It was low and stern and it made Harry yelp. He even jumped a little and banged his head on one of the shelves.

The boy who stood at the door was pretty short, only a little taller than Harry, but he made an intimidating picture framed by the closed door behind him, even dressed in vaguely Arabic-looking large pants and a colorful vest as he was. He had presence that seemed to take twice the space his body did. Harry knew, he just did, and even knowing I took him by surprise. The boy-man had dark, shaggy hair and eyes that riveted Harry to where he stood like the crosshairs of a gun. Quatre, he thought, didn't feel like this and neither did Duo.

"I am pilot 01. I have come to rescue you. Follow my directions," the boy ordered flatly and the spell was broken. The air was fairly crackling with purpose and things moving along finally.

"It's nice to meet you. Thank you for coming so quickly, this was beginning to get to me," Harry grinned to him and closed his eyes, relief flooding him; now this stupid misadventure would finally be over! He tried to reach for Dudley, clumsily, not really knowing what he was even attempting. He needn't have worried. It was like there was a cord that tied him to his brother from navel to navel. He hadn't noticed before, but now he didn't know how he could have _not_ noticed it. The other end of it disappeared somewhere far away, but when Harry moved the littlest bit, shifted weight from one leg to another, it was like some great weight had tugged at the cord. It was actually a bit sickening feeling actually, like half of his innards had hung outside, only without pain if that made any sense. Harry resolved to be quick.

"Status, Dursley?" the stern voice demanded and Harry felt vaguely embarrassed; he must look pretty worrying, just standing there with his eyes closed.

"Don't worry, I'm just getting my brother," he explained and waved towards the voice and then concentrated. He had done this before, it was easy now. He wasn't going to splinch his brother, he wasn't.

"Dudley!" he exclaimed and felt the cord pull taunt. The air separated with a sharp crack.

* * *

Dudley Dursley sat with his knees pulled against his chest on the bed and stared at the wall; there wasn't anything else to do in the small cell he had been dumped into. The walls had been painted warm green, but otherwise the room had all the prison features: small size, heavy metal door with hatch and barred window, a bench and just a small conjoined bathroom with a toilet and a shower. To add insult to the injury the toothpaste tasted dreadful and the soap was hard enough he could have brained someone with it.

He'd had a lot of time to think in his cell. Dudley Dursley had always taken a lot for granted, just like all his friends. He was good at being a privileged English upper middle class teenager, hanging out at the mall with his friends, playing games in front of the telly the whole summer and eating whenever he was bored or sad and angry or just saw something he liked. What he wasn't good at was change. Harry was supposed to always be there, but then he was kidnapped, first to Uganda with real Gundam pilots who didn't kidnap him for real after all and then by this Walburga bitch. Dudley wasn't used to being worried and he wasn't very good at it, but now he had to worry. He wasn't used to being scared, but none of these people even spoke English, or at least they refused to speak like normal people to him.

There was something inside him now, something there hadn't been before. Harry had magic and Dudley had wanted magic too. Harry gave it to him, but then Dudley found that maybe the stupid fortune cookie platitude about bewaring what you wished for had something to it after all. Dudley had gotten exactly what he wanted, magic and an adventure, and now he wished he had never found out at all.

There was nothing in the cell to distract Dudley from his thoughts either, nothing that beeped or shot at pixel people, damn, he would even have taken a book at this point. It was another first for him. Then something very strange happened to him. Left alone with himself, he had found under layers of laziness and selfishness Dudley Dursley.

The experience was frankly terrifying as hell and Harry couldn't come to his rescue quickly enough.

It was an afternoon when something happed that broke the monotony for the first time since he had been shoved into the green room. He was having a perfectly fine sulk when everything dimmed in his eyes and his ears were full of murmur, like waves breaking against the sand. Something seemed to glitter through the blur on the floor, something green and blue and shiny, but then his eyes cleared again and it was gone. The floor was as bare as ever, but Dudley felt a shiver go down his back.

"Magic's… magic stinks like piss," he muttered, but it didn't make him feel better. He thought about the words he sometimes heard in the telly that always made his mother switch the channels. "Bloody Pringle-wearing twat in a piss factory." He couldn't quite force his voice to rise into a proper shout and besides, he was distracted by wondering what was so bad about wearing Scottish sweaters. But the magic didn't go away. It was rolling and roiling inside him like a fart that just couldn't seem to get out and it made him squirm. The lone, cold eye of a security camera watched him from above and when it happed into Dudley's field of vision it seemed to mock his attempts at swearing and not sounding like a little boy.

"I wish you would just break, damn it!" he spat at it and the pressure left him immediately, leaving him a little lightheaded for some reason.

Then the lights went out.

Dudley Dursley had magic, in an auxiliary kind of way, but he had never used it on purpose in his life. In this he was very similar to young magical children – and as with children, sometimes accidents happens. In this case, accidental magic. The security routines of Romefeller Base Luxor reported a blackout that happened in a specific area; a perfect circle, only four hundred feet in diameter, surrounding one of the holding cells. The situation was flagged as Orange Three: no surveillance in the compromised area and an enemy infiltration suspected, but not confirmed. Dudley remained blissfully unaware that the base went into immediate lock-down as the Romefeller private contractors forced the door that had gone into lock-down open and methodically searched the base for infiltrators. He sat in the darkness for what felt like hours, though it was in truth only one hour. And then…

Harry had "apparated" him before and the experience didn't really get better. It was like he was squeezed through a small tube and twisted like a wet blanket. At the other end of the journey Dudley landed on his ass only to stare into the barrel of a gun. A minute after this the door of his cell was opened to reveal the lack of a surly, overweight teenager.

* * *

There was a loud thump and a dizzying lurch that almost pulled Harry down to the floor. His eyes snapped open and he had to pull his leg back to keep from keeling over. There Dudley was, sitting on his ass on the mousy-colored carpet. He grinned at first, feeling amused and a kind of sense of sharing – he'd always been bad at landing when he traveled through the floo. But then Dudley's red face turned grayish and his eyes turned wide and scared. Harry followed his gaze to 01 and found the boy holding a heavy-looking gun, aimed squarely at Dudley's chest.

"Hey, don't, he's my brother! Black took him hostage so I would behave!" he protested and jumped between them, arms spread wide. There was something in staring to the mouth of a gun that made Harry's insides freeze just a little. It had been there with Quatre's men and the Umoja men in the camp, but those guns hadn't been pointed at him. There was heaviness to it that wand didn't have, even though a wand in the hands of someone who knew what he was doing was probably a lot more dangerous than a gun. When the gun turned to floor and was returned to its holster somewhere in the folds of the big pants it was like an extra chunk of gravity fell away with it.

"My Gundam can only piggyback one person," 01 said with a flat voice and Harry winced; he hadn't thought about that at all. He should have thought, he had ridden with Quatre twice that he was conscious enough to remember, but everything had happened so quickly that including Dudley into this had been difficult… and now he was just making excuses. He had been stupid, period.

"Can't we hide somewhere and talk about this more? I want to get out of here as soon as possible," he pleaded, though what he wanted most was some time to think. He wasn't going to leave Dudley behind in Kemet, that wasn't an option, but he had a feeling that 01 wasn't going to leave him.

01 made a noise at the back of his throat that sounded a bit like "hrn" and Harry was left wondering if that was an agreement or a disagreement, because then the noises outside the window went up a notch. 01's head whipped around with a swift movement that reminded Harry of a snake's and he walked with silent steps, pushed the curtain so they would hide him and opened the latch. Harry started to sneak after him, but the sight of Dudley sitting on the floor, still deathly pale, startled him.

"You didn't break anything, did you?" he asked and knelt beside Dudley. He wasn't sure what could be broken by falling on your ass, except maybe pelvis, but Dudley didn't look anywhere near in pain enough for that, thank Merlin.

"He had a gun," Dudley whispered and gave 01 a timid look that looked very much out of place on his face. Something flickered through Harry's mind, Dudley that first summer after he had returned from Hogwarts, before the Dursleys had found out that he wasn't allowed to use magic during summer. Dudley had been wary, but now his chins were trembling in a way that made Harry fear he was about to cry.

"It's okay, he's a friend," Harry said, even though he felt that calling 01 a friend might be stretching the truth a little bit. He wasn't friendly like Quatre and Duo – Harry didn't even know his name. But he didn't think that telling Dudley that would be a very good idea.

"A gun," Dudley repeated with even quieter voice, making Harry frown. What had those soldiers done to Dudley that he was so scared? Guns had their own gravity, but it's not like it was that bad, right?

"Dudley, tell me…" he begun, then ceased, unsure what to ask and how to ask it so that he didn't offend Dudley's masculine sensibilities. 01 interrupted him before he could even begin, striding over to him and pulling him off the floor.

"The nearby Romefeller Luxor Base has been infiltrated; the soldiers have been sent here to protect the VIPs," he grunted. When Harry took a step closer to the window he could just see the sea of people in white and rainbow-colored clothes by the bright lanterns, herded by men in darker, stricter clothes. The tinkling, swaying music that had been constant background to the night had quieted now.

"But I just now pulled Dudley away, how did they get here?" he wondered, counting in his head. Even if Dudley and the soldiers had been in a hypothetical secret basement of evil of the villa this would be pushing it.

"I think it happened a few hours ago. The lights went out," Dudley pointed out from the floor.

"The worst luck ever," Harry grumbled, but he wasn't really that worried. He could just apparate them out of the house right when he knew where they would be going. "I can take us all out of here, just tell me where…" he asked, but the rest of it went unsaid when the door was opened without preamble and Dorothy in white, sleeveless dress and another Cleopatra headdress walked in. 01 pulled his gun, but now Harry knew to expect it and grabbed his wrist; his whole weight barely slowed the upwards arc of the hand.

"You can't shoot Dorothy either." He just barely managed to keep himself from shouting it. _How can he be so strong_, Harry couldn't help thinking. Dorothy took a step back, staring at the gun. She had gone pale under her tan, but something in her eyes hardened before Harry's eyes until they were no more sky blue, but like chips of ice. She took then a determined step in and closed the door behind her.

"You are responsible for the bodies found in the hangar, I presume. Why, Mister Terrorist, what a wonderfully nice garb you have. I especially love how you have nothing under that vest," she drawled in a way that sounded very adult to Harry and allowed her eyes travel up and down 01's body. 01's face coloured and Harry stared at Dorothy with disbelieving eyes. She'd seemed nice before, if a bit strange, but most people he knew ranged from a bit strange to totally bonkers. But now, it was like she had transformed into some other species altogether. Harry continued to hang into 01's arm even though it wasn't really doing anything.

"Put your hands behind your head," 01 ordered. Dorothy obeyed without any outward obvious fear, though she was still watching the gun.

"They are going to secure the house, you know," she said conversationally. "Harry's a guest and I'm sure I can pass you as a friend in those clothes as long as the poor boy you stripped doesn't get a look at you, but what are you planning on doing about him?" She nodded with her head towards Dudley who was just picking himself off the floor.

"Dursley, do we need a hostage to get out?" 01 asked, not bothering to answer Dorothy's question at all. He easily slipped his hand out of Harry's grip.

"If I say no, are you going to shoot her?" he asked, licking his lips. It was an amazingly stupid question, everything considered, but it was the first thing that popped into his mind.

"You really are sweet, aren't you, Harry? Much too sweet to marry off to someone like me. Take my advice, kind and faithful girls are your type," Dorothy quipped, but when she held his gaze her eyes were oddly soft for the littlest while. Dudley mumbled something about starting a harem and Harry wished he could sink through the floor.

"Tell me, Mister Terrorist, you are going to fight till victory or death, right? You will wage war to your best capabilities." It wasn't really a question and 01 didn't answer, but Dorothy looked satisfied all the same. She had ancient-looking make-up with heavy black lines around the eyes that extended towards the temples and green eye shadow that reached the eyebrows. Harry wasn't sure how authentic it was, but Dorothy looked like some ancient princess who might at any moment shout: "Off with their heads!"

"That is good. Fight like a man possessed. Never give up, never give in." The heat in Dorothy's words could have melted the polar glaciers, both of them and quite easily. Then she did something amazingly stupid.

She leapt forwards and wrapped her arms around the Asian-looking boy's neck – and kissed him. His gun was between them, poking her in the stomach, but she had pressed her mouth to his heedless of it and kissed him like the heroines kissed the heroes during the last three minutes of a film, like they had fought zombies together and survived. It was like watching a train wreck happen; Harry blushed and felt terrible for staring, but he couldn't look away either. Dorothy's eyes were closed, but 01 was not-kissing her with his eyes open and for all he was threatening her with a gun he looked remarkably like a deer in the headlights. Harry didn't really know Dorothy all that well, but he was pretty sure she was doing this just to psych 01 out. He also thought that she had just passed the totally bonkers stage and went straight to the clinically insane land. When 01 finally got enough of his bearings together to push her away Harry decided to spare everyone further embarrassment and possible death.

He apparated them away. He still didn't know where they were supposed to go, but he didn't care, just sending them to the dark dunes beyond the wall that surrounded the villa. 01 wasted no time tackling Harry behind one of the dunes and Dudley went down with Harry like a rock, sending up a small cloud of dust.

"What is your name?" he asked after spitting out a mouthful of sand. It felt terribly awkward to continue calling the pilot 01 even in his thoughts.

"Codename Heero Yuy," was the answer. Harry's mind boggled. It was dark there, away from the lights of the garden and the Luxor a little ways away as well. Even though Heero loomed near Harry his face disappeared into shadows so Harry could only see the gleam of his eyes. It was so different from THE Heero Yuy, the charismatic colony politician and Ibie's greatest hero number two, second only to Mathilda Sisulu in her feministic estimation, that it made him snort.

"Whoever gave you that name had either no sense of humour, or too much of one," he said and peeked over the dune because that was what Heero was doing. He was a little disappointed that Heero hadn't told him his real name, but they didn't know each other yet. Maybe Heero would give it to him once they became proper friends.

* * *

The hospital room in Luxor's International Hospital's Special Care Ward was luxurious. Everything was white and black and chrome, the walls and the sofas placed aesthetically under the windows, the table lamps and the coffee table. A kitchenette with a maid ready to serve the patient, nice art hanging on the walls, state of the art electronics, though naturally some were out of use due to the unfortunate situation until the Internet would be brought back up. The bed linens were high-thread-count sheets, the same kind the royalty of Sanq had used before the tragic death of the old king and the disappearance of his heirs. The conjoining bathroom gleamed with polished marble. The huge windows displayed panoramic view of the river Nile.

Neo Camander thought that he's never seen his employer look so small and fragile as she looked now, lying in the bed. There was gray pallor to her skin and her arms seemed so slim, like a bird's bones. The elegance and extravagance of the room diminished Walburga Black.

"Now look what situation you got us into, ma'am," he sighed and shook his head. The doctor who hovered near his arm gave him a reproachful glare.

"You don't appear terribly concerned, Mr. Camander," the man scolded Neo with heavy accent and raised one sardonic eyebrow. This was the worst kind of snobbery, Neo thought, the new money snobbery. It trickled down the steps of society until even the doctor of the rich and famous was taking airs. Neo had dressed in black suit this morning, out of respect, but he was still wearing his rope sandals and a spiral necklace made of koa wood. It was a second nature to him now, easy as breathing to be the friendly face to Black's (very respectable and proper) reign of terror. He gave the doctor a calculated, wan smile.

"I assure you, good doctor, that I am indeed very concerned. Dame Black was a fighter, she was. Took over her father and husband's financial empire without a single misstep and brought honor to the family name. Now the stocks are going to take a fall. If she could, she would be kicking herself – and us for not being any help!" he finished with a fond note and the doctor nodded, mollified, Neo again filed under "quirky and harmless" in his estimation. The stocks might take a dip, yes, but it would only turn into a serious shit storm if it leaked to the general public that the heir had been kidnapped.

The truth was that Neo was anything but harmless, the old harpy – but a respectable, no-nonsense harpy, mind you – would be tearing Luxor apart now were she not brought to this, and that the paperwork had gone through yesterday was the sole light in this grim situation. It had gone through with an unseemly haste, of course. Right now in England a woman was crying for the child whose mother she no longer was – and the other one who had gone mysteriously missing.

Neo Camander held no political loyalties, but Dame Black paid well for his services. He didn't like his employer, but he respected her good qualities; the effortless ease she maneuvered herself favors such as government grants, special tax breaks and legal permits, her keen intelligence and eye for strategic detail, her initiative and certain ruthless boldness to seize an opportunity. Her obsession with the notion of Blood was unfortunate, but that couldn't really be helped. Now Harry Black had disappeared and Dorothy Catalonia's story had painted the situation as a kidnapping. Thoroughly enraged Duke Dermail was waiting for a ransom note even now, but Neo knew better. Just like with young Harry, Dorothy Catalonia had unexpected depths and this whole situation was just a tad too convenient, especially when one remembered that Harry had been "kidnapped" once already.

Dudley Dursley had disappeared also, Neo's only concrete evidence that Harry hadn't gone unwillingly. A kidnapper wouldn't have cared of the brother, but a rescuer might.

"I will send a person with the power of an attorney to help you, doctor, but now I must go. The Black empire doesn't hold itself in one piece, you know." And the Black heir wasn't going to find himself – unless possibly in some socio-ecologic religious sense that included drinking too much red wine, talking politics with girls who refused to shave and practicing yoga with a fat little guru. Someone was going to have to contact the insurance company and deal with a hundred kinds of certificates up to and including stock certificates and recent income tax forms, but that luckily wasn't his problem.

Neo gave Dame Black one last glance before walking out of the room. She was gray and still and fragile, unchanged. He wasn't really sure why it made him melancholic. It wasn't as if this had been completely unexpected; she had been given a nasty shock, she wasn't a spring chicken anymore.

And brain aneurysms run in her family.

* * *

AN: The French is the language of love… and bizarre terms of endearment. I so love torturing Heero, he's so straight-laced. The next chapter should be fun too. There we get to convince Heero that magic is real.

Again, many thanks to my very patient and wonderful beta Mystic 777!


End file.
